




I 


O. E. GODDARD 




Class'S''/iXSJZl 

Book_ 

Copyright N?_- 

COPYRIGHT DEPOStli 


% 









Modern Evangelism on 
Fundamental Lines 


By 


O, E. GOODARD, D.D. 

Of the North Arkansas Conference 


Author of “Some Facts about China: A Manual of Missions for 
Laymen” “Biblical Finances” “Making America 
Safe,” “Handbook on Revivals.” 




Nashville, Tenn. 
COKESBURY PRESS 
19x4 






Copyright, 1924 
By 

Lamar & Barton 


y 


Printed in the United States of America 

JUN -6 1924 

©C1A792725 

I 



PREFACE 


One of the most effective agencies for increasing 
the efficiency of the ministers in our Church to-day 
is the Summer Schools conducted by the General 
Boards, the Conference Boards, and the colleges. 
In all these there is a demand that evangelism be 
taught. The writer and others who have taught 
in these schools searched in vain for a book adapted 
to the needs in this course. Of good books on 
evangelism there is no paucity. On the contrary, 
there is a plethora of books on evangelism, but they 
were not written as a text for this particular kind of 
work. The managers and promoters of these schools, 
together with the Cokesbury Press, have asked the 
writer to undertake to write such a book. No one 
can be more keenly conscious of the shortcomings 
of the book than the writer. It has been written 
in the midst of the strenuous and multitudinous 
duties of a large pastorate. Literary merit and 
rhetorical finish have not concerned the writer* To 
write a plain, didactic book that could be read, 
studied, and taught by those who are striving for 
increased efficiency in evangelistic work has been the 
uppermost thought of the author. If perchance it 
does make some preacher more effective in winning 
souls, the author shall thank God and take courage. 

The Author. 


Conway, Ark., February, 1924. 










CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. What Is a Revival?. 7 

II. The Evangelistic Church. 15 

III. How to Prepare for a Revival: Preparation 

in General. 29 

IV. Preparation for Revival: The Survey. 40 

V. Evangelistic Preaching. 54 

VI. Jesus, t^Evangelist. 62 

A VII. Personal Evangelism. 75^ 

VIII. After the Revival, What?. 85 

IX. Pastoral and Vocational Evangelism. 95 

X. St. Paul, the General Evangelist. 101 

XI. Evangelism in the Sunday School.109 

XII. Decision Day . 118 

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Modern Evangelism on Funda¬ 
mental Lines 

CHAPTER I 
WHAT IS A REVIVAL? 

Pedantic definitions and etymological distinctions 
are sometimes a weariness to the flesh, but clear- 
cut conceptions and clarified thinking are indis¬ 
pensable to efficient service in the kingdom of 
God. In ordinary parlance, we use the word “ re¬ 
vival ” rather loosely. We speak of a revival to begin 
at a certain time; of a revival that did not reach any 
one; of a revival that ran so many weeks; of a 
revival that left an unwholesome aftermath; of a 
revival in which hundreds were saved; thus showing 
clearly that we are applying the word to all efforts 
for stirring up a Church and recruiting members. 
What then do we mean by a revival? 

“Revival” and “protracted meeting” are not 
necessarily synonymous. A protracted meeting may 
be a revival or it may not. A revival may register it¬ 
self in protracted services or it may go on indefinitely 
without an extra service. The writer saw one meeting 
protracted and protracted until it was a distracted 
meeting, but it was not a revival. He also saw a 
rural prayer meeting conducted by laymen evolve 
into a revival that went on for six months, but there 
was no protracted meeting as we usually use that 
word. It is sincerely hoped that we may learn to 

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8 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

make every protracted meeting a revival meeting 
and that we may never forget that we can have a 
good and gracious revival without an extra service. 
Hence, the words “revival” and “protracted meet¬ 
ing” are not synonyms. 

A revival is not a campaign for bringing people 
into the Church. Usually a revival results in 
bringing people into the Church, but multitudes 
may be brought into the Church when there is no 
revival. The writer once saw a denomination put 
on a campaign for members and they got twelve 
hundred into one Church in one meeting. It was a 
mass of unregenerate and unwieldly humanity. The 
Church never recovered from that incubus. Usually 
when a preacher says, “We had no conversions, but 
we had a good meeting in the Church,” he is really 
trying to avoid the humiliating confession that the 
meeting was a failure. However that may be, there 
is such a thing as having a good revival in the Church 
when no one professes conversion. There are situa¬ 
tions wherein the supreme need is reclaiming and 
revivifying Church members, and the emphasis 
ought to be placed on that in such situations. If 
the meeting reaches that end, it is a good revival. 
Of course all saved people should join the Church. 
Those who profess, but who do not join, nearly 
always drift away. What is being said in brief is 
this: Do not estimate the revival by the number of 
persons who join the Church. Do not hold meetings 
merely to enroll members. We are suffering, God 
only knows how much now, from filling our churches 
with unregenerated people. Revival campaigns 
ought to be waged to get people converted and into 


What Is a Revival ? 


9 


the Church, but deliver us from mechanical cam¬ 
paigns whose purpose is to enroll members. What¬ 
ever that may be, let it not be called a revival. It 
is still true that the major part of those joining our 
Church join during the revival campaign. 

A revival is not getting together a great multitude 
in the church or under a tabernacle in a so-called 
religious service. All leaders in revival work want 
a large audience. They yearn for it. They pray for 
it. They work for it. A big audience increases the 
opportunity for service. Every legitimate means 
should be used to get a great audience. But a great 
multitude can be gotten together by illegitimate 
means and performances can be put on in the name of 
religion that will insure a great crowd. Jazz singing, 
jazz performances, jazz gospel will do it. A morbid 
curiosity can be aroused. If the leader has an obses¬ 
sion for a big audience, if the newspapers will say 
that standing room was at a premium and hundreds 
were turned away (preachers ought to be very con¬ 
servative about telling how many were turned away. 
Let the newspapers do that kind of prevaricating), 
if it becomes the talk of the community that one must 
go early to get a seat, there will be no difficulty about 
the size of the audience. But that is not a revival. 
At its best the meeting will not bring out as many 
as the circus draws, but the circus is not a revival. 
Neither is a multitude brought together by jazz 
performances a revival. Cheap sensationalism, 
freak capers, and subtle advertising will bring the 
crowd, but do not call that a revival. A genuine 
revival will likely bring the multitudes. It ought to 
do so. It usually does. But a small group unheard 


10 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

of in the city might have a great revival. By all 
proper means get the crowd and then do your best 
to have a revival. But do not measure the effective¬ 
ness of the revival by the size of the congregation. 

Neither is an emotional stir a revival. Let it be 
understood once for all that nothing is said here 
derogatory of emotions. Far be it from the author 
to speak lightly of the great surging tides of emotion 
that the eternal verities of the gospel produce in the 
human soul. But it is said most emphatically that a 
shallow emotionalism fy not to be taken for spir¬ 
ituality. Excessive emotions that do not register 
themselves in ethical conduct are a curse. The 
ecclesiastical mountebank can play upon the emo¬ 
tions, have a great stir, and seem to be sweeping the 
community without producing any permanent re¬ 
sults. Emotionality and spirituality are not the same. 
One man may be powerfully emotional and not 
spiritual, while another may be profoundly spiritual 
but not emotional. A tearful man may be spiritual 
or he may be void of spirituality. The activity of 
the lachrymal glands is no sign of spirituality. The 
fruit of the Spirit is not tears, groans, nor shouts. 
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance: against such there is no law.” A 
spiritual man is one in whom these virtues shine 
harmoniously as the primary colors in the sunbeam. 
A spiritual meeting is one in which these fruits are 
seen. There may be shouting and tears and hallelu¬ 
jahs or there may not be. The infallible test is, 
“Are the fruits of the Spirit there?” The cheapest 
type of religion in the world is reveling in shallow 


What Is a Revival? 


11 


emotions and imagining that it is spirituality. To 
offer superficial emotionality as a substitute for prac¬ 
tical Christian living is an insult to Almighty God 
and it ought to be rejected by men. 

What then is a revival? To revive is to impart a 
new and larger life. In early autumn, when vege¬ 
tation is slowly dying for want of moisture and 
there come copious showers and the moisture 
touches the life-giving avenues and the hitherto 
languishing vegetation stands out again in living 
green, there has been a revival in the vegetable 
kingdom. It has had an impartation of a new 
and larger life. If some part of our bodies is not 
receiving an adequate supply of the vitalizing fluid 
of the body, and the doctor by heart stimulation or 
the surgeon by surgical operation sends an adequate 
supply and the dying tissues revive, there has been 
a revival in the animal kingdom. It has had an im¬ 
partation of a new and larger life. It has been re¬ 
vived. So when believers begin to decline, when their 
spiritual vitality is decreasing, when the processes of 
spiritual death are being set up, if there comes an 
awakening and the soul turns again to God and the 
clogged-up channels are again opened and the life 
of God flows afresh down into the soul, that is a 
revival, a spiritual revival. Every soul that receives 
an impartation of a new and larger life has a revival. 
In this sense a revival is individualistic. One 
individual and God can have a revival anywhere, 
any time. How foolish in any one to complain that 
“we somehow cannot have a revival here”! To one 
who knows, that is an acknowledgment that he is 
not right with God. Any soul that wants a fresh 


12 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

supply of Divine grace can get it any time, any¬ 
where, he or she turns to God. A revival after this 
fashion can be had any place outside of hades. 

In common parlance, however, we mean more 
than the impartation of a new and larger life. The 
word “revival” has extended its meaning. It has 
increased in extent without diminishing its content. 
We by common consent now mean not only the 
impartation of a new and larger life to believers, 
but we also mean the reclamation of backsliders and 
the conversion of sinners. A meeting protracted or 
regular stated meeting that results in the impartation 
of a new and larger life to believers, the reclamation 
of backsliders, and the conversion of sinners is a 
revival. Indeed any one of these three results may 
properly be called a revival. If the members of 
the Church get a new experience, get a new and 
larger life, that is a revival. If backsliders are re¬ 
claimed, that is really a resurrection from the dead. 
But usage makes it proper to call that a revival. If 
nothing else is done, if only backsliders are reclaimed, 
that is a revival as we use that word to-day. If 
sinners are converted, it is a revival. That is really 
spiritual birth, but we now call it a revival. It 
might be that there are no believers that need a new 
and larger life (that is hardly possible, however), 
and there may be no backsliders in the community 
(and that would be unusual); but if sinners are con¬ 
verted, it is a revival. Some one of these features 
must be present to justify the word “revival.” 
The audiences might be large, the preaching enter¬ 
taining, the singing delightful, and the fellowship 
fine, but no revival. But if sinners are converted, or 


What Is a Revival? 13 

if backsliders are reclaimed, or if believers receive a 
new experience, it is a revival. 

The usual chronological order is, believers revived, 
backsliders reclaimed, and sinners converted. 

Views concerning what a revival is have been no 
more erroneous than how to have one. In the long 
ago men supposed that they did not occur frequently. 
If a community were visited by a gracious revival 
one year, it was commonly thought that it would 
likely be several years before another could be ex¬ 
pected. It was even said that they came in cycles of 
five years. But the exceptions were too numerous. 
Some Churches had them more frequently than that 
and some did not have one in ten years. Abandoning 
the idea of periodicity, others said they could not 
be accounted for. They came and went in unac¬ 
countable ways. That gave rise to the fatalistic 
notion of waiting for God's good time to send a re¬ 
vival. The writer once heard a man pray, “ O Lord, 
when will it be thy good pleasure to send us a re¬ 
vival?” The implication in this is that if the revival 
does not come, God is to blame. Such implication 
Methodists renounce. Revivals are not capricious. 
They are not freakish. They are subject to law. 
The more we learn of God, the more are we convinced 
that all he does he does by well-regulated laws. He 
is the Author of all law. 

There are a few fundamental facts that we might 
well keep in mind. God is always ready to revive 
his people. The Church always needs a revival. 
Whether they have it depends upon whether they 
comply with the Divine law. Usually a revival is 
preceded by a deep sense that one is needed. Then 


14 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

comes heart-searching. Discoveries of sin, shocking 
and humiliating, are made in the hearts of believers. 
Church members get a new experience. Unusual 
activity begins to show itself in the membership. 
The preacher preaches with strange unction. Con¬ 
viction seizes upon the unsaved and there is a turn¬ 
ing to the Lord. 

The conviction that the revival is the best agency 
for reaching adult sinners ought to be deeply im¬ 
planted in the mind of preacher and people. We 
should by all means make the Church so fervent 
and the services so helpful that souls would be con¬ 
verted all the year through. That ought to be the 
holy endeavor of every pastor and every Church. 
Even then there are many who will never be reached 
in the ordinary services. It takes the organized, 
specialized, high-pressure method to get them. If 
we are willing to become all things to all men, use 
legitimate methods that by all of them we may save 
the largest number possible, we will not neglect this 
agency which has been so wonderfully blessed of 
God in reaching grown-up sinners. So long 2 lz nearly 
half of our adult population are unsaved we cannot 
think of dispensing with the old-time revival. 


CHAPTER II 

THE EVANGELISTIC CHURCH 

When one takes a retrospective view and sees 
what God has wrought through Methodism in a 
century of work, and remembers that for more than 
a quarter of a century after the first sermon the 
settlements were few and far between and preachers 
of our faith were few and poorly paid; when one 
calls to mind the meager opportunities and the mul¬ 
titudinous difficulties for Church work in the pioneer 
days, and the political changes we have undergone, 
and then counts the millions of Methodist com¬ 
municants to-day—something is seen of which all 
are justly proud. Nothing but a fervent and ag¬ 
gressive, intensive and extensive, persistent and 
invincible type of evangelism could have achieved 
such glorious results. All honor to the pioneer 
Methodist circuit rider, missionary and man of God, 
evangelist and colporteur, who crossed the prairies, 
swam the streams, endured hardships unknown to 
us, and planted the banner of Jesus Christ in every 
nook and comer of this vast domain. Peace to the 
memory of these who first told the story of Jesus 
and his love and laid the foundations upon which 
we are building. May their evangelistic spirit and 
fervor fall upon us, their successors! The highest 
commendation that could be pronounced upon us is 
that we should be worthy sons of the noble sires who 
preceded us in service and have gone to their reward. 

I do no violence to history when I claim that the 

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16 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

secret of our success has been the evangelistic spirit. 
One need not be a prophet or the son of a prophet 
to forecast that if the history we shall make during 
the next century shall be proportionately as great, 
the evangelistic spirit must be maintained. I dare 
to say that if we lose the evangelistic spirit there will 
be no centennial celebration one hundred years from 
to-day. The remnants of Methodism would speak 
enthusiastically of our early history and apologetic¬ 
ally of the second century, and Methodism would be 
growing senile and inefficient. May it never be said 
of Methodism: “Our little systems have their day, 
have their day and cease to be”! It will never be 
said of us if we maintain the evangelistic spirit; but 
if we lose that, it likely will be said of us, and ought 
to be said. 

Why is the Methodist Church the evangelistic 
Church? Why was evangelism the dominant note in 
our ministry in all our early history? Why do we 
claim that if we cease to be evangelistic we shall 
cease to be the mighty power for good we have been? 
No man is entitled to an opinion on a subject unless 
he forms that opinion from a historic viewpoint. 
He must know the subject in its historic setting. He 
must know its origin and its antecedents. What care 
I for a man's opinion on the tariff who does not know 
its history? Who cares for a man's opinion on 
governmental finances who knows nothing of the 
history of governmental finances? Whose opinion is 
worth anything concerning war who does not know 
something of the history of wars? Whose opinion is 
worth anything concerning Church polities who does 
not know the evolution of these polities? 0, a man 


The Evangelistic Church 


17 


may say, the evangelistic spirit is a good thing in 
any man’s Church. So it is; but if that is all he 
knows about it, he is not an intelligent Methodist. 
There are historic reasons why the Methodist 
Church is and should be the evangelistic Church 
and why ours, above all other Churches, has put 
emphasis on evangelism. 

The deplorable, lamentable, awful condition of 
England, politically, morally, and religiously, when 
the Wesleys came on the scene cannot be described 
and can hardly be conceived. The political situation 
was corrupt beyond our most extravagant concep¬ 
tions of corruption. Society was rotten to the core. 
The clergy in the city were worldly and their preach¬ 
ing colorless. Blackstone, that great jurist, said he 
had heard every noted divine in London, and in no 
case could he tell from the sermon whether the min¬ 
ister was a Mohammedan, Confucianist, or Christian. 
What a fearful indictment! Remember who Black- 
stone was. The country clergy were intolerably 
ignorant and did not conceal their depravity so 
well as did the city preachers. All were utterly void 
of spiritual life and power. 

Milton in his day speaks of the hungry sheep 
coming to the bins and looking for food and getting 
nothing but wind. Green, Lecky, and other unbiased 
historians gave us a horrible picture of the religious 
conditions. The clergy, void of convictions, could 
change from Protestant to Catholic, or vice versa, 
as easily as they could change their raiment. In the 
reign of Mary there were nine thousand Catholic 
clergy. When Elizabeth ascended the throne and 
changed the administration to Protestant, all these 
2 


18 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

nine thousand turned Protestant except three hun¬ 
dred and twenty-five! Think of that! No wonder 
Voltaire prophesied that Christianity would soon 
cease to be. With the clergy so ignorant, so worldly, 
so corrupt, what could you expect of the rank and 
file of the membership? Vital Christianity had 
practically disappeared. Experimental religion was 
unknown. If one had claimed that he had the wit¬ 
ness of the Spirit, he would have been called a fool 
or a fanatic. Divine assurance, the consciousness 
that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from sin, was 
not heard from the pulpit or experienced by the pew. 
I repeat that the moral and religious condition of that 
time cannot be conceived, much less described. 

McTyeire’s opening sentence in his great “History 
of Methodism” is the key to the history of our 
Church: “It was not a new doctrine, but a new life 
that the first Methodists sought for themselves and 
others.” We had no quarrel with theology, but with 
the Church life of that day. They taught the doc¬ 
trine of the deity of Christ, the personality of the 
Holy Spirit, authenticity of the Holy Scriptures, a 
heaven for the righteous, and the damnation of the 
wicked. They had the form of godliness, but were 
void of the power. It was not a new doctrine, but 
a new life that the world needed. God has a way, 
at these supremely crisal hours, of bringing a man 
on the scene to turn the currents of history and save 
the world from the total wreck that seems impending. 
Such a man was John Wesley, whom God brought 
foward at this hour. 

Luther not only fought corrupt practices, but the 
pernicious doctrines of Rome. Other Churches have 


The Evangelistic Church 


19 


come on the scene to emphasize certain doctrines. 
Our Presbyterian friends have a divine mission on 
doctrinal lines. So, I am willing to concede, have all 
the evangelical Churches. Ours is the only Church 
whose mission is “ vital godliness.” We are in accord 
with all the evangelical Churches in their funda¬ 
mental doctrines. Perhaps the witness of the Spirit 
might be called an exclusively Methodist doctrine. 
At least nearly all else we teach was theoretically 
held by some other Churches before we came into 
history. Vital Christianity, conscious salvation, and 
the witness of the Spirit are nearly one and the same 
thing; and since no other Church was teaching them, 
we might call them our distinctive doctrines. When 
we cease to emphasize these things more than oth¬ 
er Churches, we lose our distinctive marks. We 
expect all Churches to be evangelistic, but not pre¬ 
eminently so. We expect all of them to emphasize 
soul-winning, but not so zealously and persistently as 
Methodists do. This is the historic reason why the 
evangelistic spirit has been, is now, and must ever 
be the dominant spirit of Methodism. 

The evangelistic spirit in Methodism has been to 
seek and to save the lost outside the Churches, not 
to build up ours by proselyting from other Churches. 
There is a historic reason for this. If we were 
founded upon a doctrinal tenet and believed that we 
alone had salvation, we should not hesitate to prose¬ 
lyte, but we believe that the fundamentals of all the 
evangelical Churches offer life and salvation to 
humanity. We bid them Godspeed and rush on 
after the lost sheep outside the fold. We have not 
gone to other altars for our converts, but have had 


20 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 


no objection to those converted at our altars going 
to other Churches if they think that there they can 
best serve God. 

This we conceive to have been the Master's atti¬ 
tude toward the lost. When he was complained at 
for associating with the publicans and sinners, he 
defended himself with three parables—the parables 
of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost boy 
(prodigal son). He justified his concern for lost 
humanity because his attitude toward them was 
analagous to that of the woman to the lost coin, the 
shepherd to the lost sheep, and the loving father to 
the lost boy. 

Out of the raw, crude material we have built up a 
mighty Church. No other Church has been made 
weaker by our aggressive policy. Indeed, all have 
been benefited. The reflex influence of the Method¬ 
ist movement on the Church of England has, beyond 
all question, been immeasurably helpful. Our policy 
has made revivals respectable and respected. When 
first we began revivals they were belittled, ridiculed, 
and looked upon with contempt by a gainsaying 
world. But they outlived this. Neither the fires 
of opposition nor the frosts of irony could suppress 
the Methodist revivals. Finally other Churches, 
noting that revivals were powerful recruiting agencies, 
adopted the Methodist plan. What is more honor¬ 
able now than a revival? Where is the Church that 
is not proud to have one? Some of the non-evangel¬ 
ical Churches disguise them under the names of 
“missions”; but when you pull off the veneering it 
is an assault and attempt at a revival without the 
skill or efficiency of the evangelical Churches. 


The Evangelistic Church 


21 


No, our wonderful increase in members in not due 
to proselyting. We are strictly ethical in dealing 
with other denominations. We treat them as hon¬ 
ored agencies and deal with them in a brotherly 
way. We think proselyting contemptible. We had 
rather die than maintain ourselves by getting the 
disgruntled, sore-headed members of other Churches. 
A proselyting preacher would purloin potatoes if 
there were no penitentiaries. 

The evangelistic spirit in Methodism will not allow 
us to make a fetish out of any particular form of 
revivalism. The form of revival that Wesley con¬ 
ducted in England was not the same that we had in 
the pioneer times in America. The old-fashioned 
brush arbor with its “mourners' bench" and all the 
accessories we had in the days of our fathers would 
have looked strange to Mr. Wesley. Some people 
ignorantly think that we got that from Wesley. We 
did not. We developed it from the exigencies of the 
situation. That was the form to make evangelism 
more effective for that day. Methodism must have 
ability, flexibility, adjustability, and adaptability, 
in order to have successful revivals, however much 
the times may change. If we should become wedded 
to a certain form of evangelism and refuse to adjust 
ourselves to the changed conditions, we should soon 
be fossilized, petrified anachronisms. We may cry 
out against the times all we please. We may think 
it is all going to the bad because matters are not 
going on as in the days of our fathers, but our efforts 
will be in vain. We face the conditions, not with a 
theory of methods, but with the determination to 
save the day. 


22 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

Much is being said in our day about the win-one 
method of revivals. Some look upon it as an innova¬ 
tion that will bear watching. Some think it is likely 
to fill the Church with unconverted people. Instead 
of calling this an innovation, I shall rather call it a 
reversion to the type of the primitive revival. Famil¬ 
iarity with the first chapter of John will disillusionize 
any one about the one-to-win-one method being 
new. It was the method used in the first soul-winning 
campaign ever launched in the history of Chris¬ 
tianity. If you will but listen to Jesus unfolding 
the great doctrines of the new birth to one auditor 
or discoursing with the Samaritan woman concerning 
the water of life, you will see that he was an expert 
in the one-to-win-one method. 

Finally, it is in keeping with our history to adopt 
the method that is best adapted to the times in which 
we live. This is a time of decided individualism. 
We seem to have passed out of the “gang” spirit that 
prevailed in the days of our fathers. The older 
members of the Church remember the time when, if 
the ringleader of a bunch of men got converted, 
we were sure of all the gang. If the leader 
of a group of women moved out, all her satellites 
moved also. So it was among young men and women 
also. That is not true to-day. Each person does his 
own thinking. The gang spirit is seen to some extent 
in adolescent boys, but not so pronouncedly as in 
former days. The only wise thing to do is to adopt 
the method that works most effectively. While I 
am not wedded to any method, yet I do believe that 
for this age the win-one method is the best. If each 
member wins one for Christ per year, you would 


The Evangelistic Church 


23 


double your membership annually. The active 
preacher will receive enough by letter and on pro¬ 
fession of faith as a result of his efforts to counter¬ 
balance those who go out by letter, death, and 
otherwise. 

There are certain things which to-day seem to 
imperil the evangelistic spirit in our Church. The 
first I desire to mention is the complexity of our 
organization. We have many irons in the fire. 
Our duties are multitudinous. We are no longer the 
simple, single-eyed evangelists of the pioneer times. 
Our very success has multiplied our agencies. We 
have a great educational system that must be 
maintained. We have our large missionary enter¬ 
prises that must be financed. We must house our 
converts to conserve the results of our revival work. 
Hence no day must pass, no sun set, without our 
adding one more house of worship built by Southern 
Methodists. We must raise millions of dollars 
for the endowment of the superannuate fund. 
Our publishing interests must be looked after. If we 
observe all the special days asked for and take 
offerings for all the good things that insist on a hear¬ 
ing from us, every Sunday would become a special 
Sunday for something that is very important, and 
every time a congregation assembled special offer¬ 
ings would be taken for some religious or philan¬ 
thropic enterprise. Is it any wonder that in the 
midst of such multifarious demands a preacher should 
exhaust himself in these, to the neglect of the prime 
work of a minister? I do not know how we can 
simplify our work, but this I know: It is too complex. 
We are strenuously exhausting ourselves with the 


24 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

diversified interests that must have attention and 
not allowing soul-winning to have the preeminence. 
We are dissipating our energies on side issues. 

The second menace to the evangelistic spirit is 
formalism. Formality and spirituality seem often 
to be at inverse ratio. It seems that spirituality 
might express itself in stately and fixed forms, and it 
may in a measure. It would also seem that stately 
forms and fixed ritual ought to contribute to spiritual¬ 
ity. But somehow it is still true that where the Spirit 
of the Lord is there is liberty. Elaborate rituals and 
fixed forms seem to degenerate into frozen feelings 
and frigid finesse. Ours is supposed to be a happy 
medium between ritualism and the barren, crude, 
chaotic worship/or the bedlam that obtains in 
religious organizations without a form of worship. 
Ours is sufficiently aesthetic for the spiritual- 
minded formalist and free enough for the independent 
soul that does not like to be trammeled with routine 
formula. But when we carry out all the order of 
worship and with considerable to the rise, when we 
pray over the puny penny collection, when the choir 
agonizes over some semisacred anthems, when the 
gospel message is made subordinate to the form of 
worship, we are bordering on dangerous grounds. 
Methodists must have too much fire and fervor to 
become formalists and too much decency to indulge 
in wild orgies in the name of religion. 

The third menace to the evangelistic spirit in 
Methodism is worldliness. Now, some one may be 
expecting me to go into a tirade against dancing, 
card-playing, and theater-going. That is the pity 
of it. We have scolded so much about these particu- 


The Evangelistic Church 


25 


lar forms of worldliness that we have allowed the 
man who does not, perhaps who cannot, indulge in 
these to think he is not worldly. 

In the incipiency of our history we were a very 
unworldly people. But since we have gained so 
much prestige, so much wealth, so much culture, we 
are not the simple, primitive people we were just 
subsequent to the days of the Wesleys. Now, worldli¬ 
ness consists in looking to something unchristian or 
antichristian for our happiness. It may be in the 
ballroom or in the bank. It may be at the card table 
or in the counting house. It may be in the theater 
or in the throes of the marts of trade. The money 
lover is as worldly as the dancer. The grafter is the 
worldliest man on the map. I have had men steeped 
in sordid selfishness, blind to everything but the 
almighty dollar, complain that our young people are 
too worldly. He who gets pleasure out of the lust 
of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life is 
worldly. A love for these things is incompatible 
with the love of God. When our people go outside of 
the Church circle for their pastimes and pleasures 
and hobnob with those who do not honor God, they 
are getting on dangerous ground. We must find our 
highest delight in the service of God and in the com¬ 
munion of the saints. Can a true wife get pleasure 
out of associating with her husband’s enemies in a 
place where his name would be jeered? 0 for sim¬ 
plicity of life, for Churches that afford all the pastimes 
and pleasures our people need and furnish it under 
religious auspices! 0 for a people who cannot enjoy 
an atmosphere where the name of Jesus could not be 
called without causing a hiatus! When Methodism 


26 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

becomes worldly, she belies her history and beclouds 
her future. 

How shall we maintain an evangelistic spirit and 
thereby be true to our history and fulfill our un¬ 
finished and God-given mission in the world? 

First, we must keep in mind the purpose of our 
existence and the reason we came to be. We are to 
be more zealous than other Christians. We are to 
be more fervent than others, more burdened for 
souls than others, more aggressive in revival work 
than others. When the time comes (God forbid 
that it ever should!) when we are no more zealous 
than other Church folk we might as well close our 
doors. 

Second, we must make soul-winning the chief 
business of the Church. Our educational work, 
church buildings, and all the various and sundry 
interests of the Church must be subordinated and 
properly related to the chief business. Rudyard 
Kipling was right when he said that it was a hard 
thing to keep matters properly classified—to keep 
primary things as primary, secondary things as 
secondary. Secondary things will try to usurp the 
primary place. We must have Christian education, 
for it can be a mighty factor in evangelism. We 
must build churches, or our converts will not be 
nourished and conserved. Everything in the Church 
is important because it is, or ought to be, related to 
soul-winning. 

In the third place, we can maintain the evangelistic 
spirit in Methodism by preaching and practicing the 
spirit-filled life as preached and practiced by the 
Wesleys, for all need the Pentecostal experience. I 


The Evangelistic Church 


27 


know I am getting on controverted ground and that 
I should tread carefully. I know we have wrangled 
much over holiness, sanctification, Christian per¬ 
fection, and so forth. We have oftentimes exhibited 
much unholiness in contending for some theory of 
holiness. Each one has found plenty in Wesley's 
writings to confirm him in his theory. Regardless of 
agreeing or disagreeing with any one here or else¬ 
where, I affirm that every preacher and member 
needs the Pentecostal experience for effective serv¬ 
ice. We are not qualified for pulpit preaching and 
personal work without it. 

What is that experience? Evidently it is not one 
for cleanings. Jesus said: “ Now ye are clean through 
the words which I have spoken unto you.” The 
justified life is the sinless life. If there be roots of 
bitterness in a believer, it is because he is backslidden. 
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. He 
that is born of God does not commit sin. But sin¬ 
lessness and inoffensiveness will not conquer this sin- 
cursed and sin-dominated world. It takes more than 
innocence. It takes supernatural power. The 
Pentecostal experience does not make a man infallible 
in his judgment. It gives him illumination; but I 
am skeptical about infallibility, whether it be 
claimed by the Church at Rome for the pope or by 
a man with a certain kind of Christian experience, 
numbered, named, and labeled. It does not neces¬ 
sarily enable one to talk in an unknown tongue. 
There was a reason for its doing that for those on the 
day of Pentecost, but in our day many foolish things 
have been perpetrated in the name of tongues. 
What is the Pentecostal experience? Read the Word: 


28 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

“Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is 
come upon you.” “Tarry ye in Jerusalem till ye 
be endued with power from on high.” What is this 
power? ^ What is it for? The Word tells and illus¬ 
trates. “Ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, 
and in Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the utter¬ 
most parts of the earth.” 

Witnessing power is what the apostles prayed for 
and received. They went out at once as witnesses 
concerning what the Lord had done for them. The 
Pentecostal experience casts out dumb devils, liber¬ 
ates tied tongues, makes it a joy to tell what the Lord 
has done for men. There never was a time when 
witnessing power was so much needed as now. This 
is a pragmatic age. The ever-recurring question is: 
“Is it workable, does it pay, is it practicable?” 
If our Methodists all had this witnessing power, there 
would be such evangelistic activity that soon 
Methodism would sweep the world. If all our two 
million members had it, we would be the most in¬ 
vincible power on earth. 

Methodism's past was made memorable by reason 
of our evangelistic spirit. Our vitality to-day is 
measured by our evangelistic spirit. The future 
depends upon our evangelistic spirit. May we be 
true to our history and fulfill our unfulfilled mission 
in the world! 


CHAPTER III 


HOW TO PREPARE FOR A REVIVAL: 
PREPARATION IN GENERAL 

If proper preparedness is half the battle in real 
military conflicts, it is no less true in revivals— 
spiritual warfare. A general would be foolish to 
rush into battle without preparation, so likewise 
would a general in the army of the Lord be foolish 
to rush into battle without adequate preparation. 
Many battles have been lost because the preparation 
was not wisely made. Thousands of protracted meet¬ 
ings have failed to become revivals because the prepa¬ 
ration was not wise nor adequate. The revival cam¬ 
paign is the great outstanding event of the year's 
work. It is the reaping time for the Church. More 
people join the Church during the two weeks of 
revival campaign than during all the other fifty 
weeks of the year. The good work that goes on all 
the year round is harvested in the revival meeting. 
A crop may be carefully cultivated and the soil 
made to produce abundantly, but if the farmer 
makes no preparation for gathering, he loses the 
results of his years labor. The wise farmer plans 
to reap with care, to gamer all the produce of the 
soil, to conserve the results of his toil. So likewise 
the preacher plans with great care to reap all the 
fruitage the faithful labors of himself and others 
have made possible during the year. But neither 
farmers, military men, nor any one else needs to use 
such fine discrimination in making preparation for 


30 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

anything as a preacher needs to make in getting 
ready for his revival campaign. Neglect anything 
and everything else rather than this. The preacher 
who leaves undone one thing that could be done to 
perfect the preparations for the meetings is culpable. 
Let nothing prevent the most careful and painstaking 
preparation. I have helped a goodly number of 
pastors in revival meetings. The most usual defect 
in the pastor is inadequate preparation. The voca¬ 
tional evangelist could tell us much on this line. He 
knows that it often takes him a week to get the meet¬ 
ing where it should have been when he arrived. 
All pastors who help other pastors know, too, how 
utterly many pastors fail in their preparation for a 
meeting. 

Setting the time. As a general rule every congre¬ 
gation should have a revival meeting once per year. 
Some Churches seem to get on without this, but the 
rule is that every Church needs an annual revival 
campaign. This is in addition to Decision Day, 
Rally Day, and other special days put on by different 
departments of the Church. The city pastor will 
have to consider city life. Its strenuous seasons, its 
vacation seasons, its civic affairs are all to be thought 
of in setting the time for a meeting. There will 
never be a time when everything else can be gotten 
out of the way, but do your best to set a time when 
the things that detract will be at a minimum. The 
preacher who is oblivious to these things will soon 
get the reputation (and that is a heavy liability to 
carry) of being a man without common sense. The 
whole calendar from January 1 to December 31 
ought to be studied with great care and the time 


How to Prepare for a Revival 31 

selected, all things considered, that seems most 
suited to the revival campaign. 

The rural pastor will have to consider crops, plant¬ 
ing, harvesting, roads, moonlight, schools, civic and 
patriotic celebrations, and many other fafctors. The 
pastor of an eight-point circuit will need great wis¬ 
dom in making his evangelistic calendar for the year. 
Some of his meetings ought to be held in mid-winter. 
If buildings, roads, and other factors permit, he 
ought to hold some meetings in the winter. Some 
of his people will resent the innovation. Some people 
do not know that folk can get religion except in hot 
weather—“dog days.” But a few successful winter 
meetings will disillusionize them. Other rural 
Churches could have their meeting just before Easter. 
I once knew a man who had eight meetings to hold, 
and he held them in eight weeks. He simply began 
at one place, preached one week, and went on to the 
next place. Sometimes he left penitents uncon¬ 
verted at the altar to go to the next place, where he 
had no penitents during the meeting. He felt that 
he must hold eight meetings and that the only time 
was during the eight weeks after cotton was ‘ 'laid by” 
and before cotton-picking began. There is surely a 
wiser arrangement of the revival calendar than this 
in the rural districts. 

Be he city pastor or rural pastor, he ought to con¬ 
fer freely with his officials and dependable people 
about this very matter. They know the traditions 
and the prejudices of the community better than he. 
They can often prevent his running counter to some 
local difficulty that would make a revival impossible. 
The pastor is not a monarch, not an overseer who 


32 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

lords it over God's heritage, but a servant of God 
and men and he ought to talk freely to both God and 
man about this important matter before he puts it 
on the calendar. If the preacher has the right 
conception of a revival, what it is and what it ought 
to mean to the community, he will not think all this 
painstaking care about the time exaggerated. If 
he has no adequate appreciation of the importance 
of the revival, he need not study this chapter, for 
he is doomed to failure anyway. 

The time having been wisely set, the next step is 
publicity. Rarely does a preacher give adequate 
publicity to a revival campaign. To announce it 
from time to time, to have some “ dodgers" distrib¬ 
uted on the streets, this is publicity in the minds of 
some pastors. He who thinks that is publicity knows 
nothing of the psychology of advertising. If the 
circus simply announced its coming and the day 
before had some “ dodgers" distributed, the whole 
country would not be seen at the circus. The man¬ 
agers of the circus know the psychology of adver¬ 
tising. The cold fact that a thing is to be is not 
publicity. An atmosphere must be created, the fact 
must be repeated so often audibly, visibly, and in 
every other possible way that it gets into the thinking 
of the people. You read of the circus a hundred 
times before it comes. Interest is aroused, expecta¬ 
tion created, atmosphere surcharged with the thought 
of it, and the masses go. The children of this world 
are wiser in their generation as to advertising than 
the children of light. The preacher ought to have a 
Publicity Committee. Select men and women who 
know how to advertise their own business. Use 


How to Prepare for a Revival 33 

the kind of advertising that takes in that community. 
Use newspapers, posters, dodgers, house-to-house 
cards, all these and all other legitimate methods of 
getting the meeting into the thought life of the com¬ 
munity. But major on the one that is effective in 
that community. I was in one city where newspaper 
advertising did not pay. In most cities it does. 
I have been in county seat towns where the “dodger” 
business had been overworked. Of course I did not 
use it there. Business men will know what takes in 
that community. Use it for all it is worth. Do not 
be too economical in money matters. Good adver¬ 
tising will finance itself. The increased congrega¬ 
tions will make the offerings from evening to evening 
so much larger that you will be able to pay for the 
publicity and have as much money left as you would 
have had had you not advertised. If the city ordi¬ 
nances are not against it, sometimes a great streamer 
across the street advertising the meeting is a good 
thing. I once planned to do this and found that 
there was an ordinance against it. The street com¬ 
missioner told me I could go on and do it and no one 
would object. I replied that the Church is a law- 
abiding institution and that we would not ask that 
the law be suspended for our publicity. (Teach and 
illustrate obedience to the laws in the Churches.) 
Every pastor would do well to make a careful study 
of publicity. Why should a little social function 
given in your city get more publicity than a prayer 
meeting? Why should people read what Mrs. Jones 
wore to the reception with more interest than what 
the choir sang Sunday night or what the preacher 
said at the midweek church service? Because we 
3 


34 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

have created a taste for that kind of reading by 
persistent advertising. The same persistence will 
make Church news and Church affairs interesting. 
Advertise twice, thrice, ten, twenty, fifty, one hun¬ 
dred times more than we have been advertising. 
We are engaged in the biggest and best business in 
the community, and it ought to be taught to be more 
concerned about what we are doing than about 
what any other institution is doing. Advertise much, 
more, most. 

Enlist the Church as a whole and all its auxiliaries. 
The Church ought to be impressed that the revival 
campaign is by all odds the most important event in 
the Church calendar for the year. The preacher is 
responsible in so far as he is able to influence the 
thinking of his congregation for the ideas they have 
about Church matters. It is his plain duty to im¬ 
press them with the indispensableness of the revival. 
Impress them that it is the most effective recruiting 
agency the Church has known. If he takes high 
ground and stands steadfastly there, they can be 
brought to his point of view. If he ever maintains 
an apologetic attitude toward revivals, all the pre¬ 
tentious sisters will call him progressive, up-to-date, 
and dote on him. He must stand as an avowed 
champion of the revival even if he seems for a time 
to be standing alone. If he shows a willingness to 
let other things have precedence over the revival, 
there will be a dozen things wanting one night during 
the revival campaign to put on something special. 
When once he yields to this he has conceded that the 
revival is secondary. Better have no meeting than 
have one that is rated second to other matters. Make 


How to Prepare for a Revival 35 

the revival first or nothing. Having duly impressed 
the whole Church with the supreme importance of 
the revival, he should then begin to enlist the de¬ 
partments. Perhaps he should begin with the board 
of stewards. Most any board is willing for the 
preacher to hold a meeting any time in his own 
way. They rarely offer any interference. But pity 
the board that thinks it is its duty to look after the 
temporal matters, but has no special responsibility 
in the revival campaign. They constitute the pastor’s 
staff. He should no more think of going into battle 
without them than a general would go into a bellicose 
engagement without his staff. If there is antipathy, 
it ought to be met squarely and overcome. If there 
is apathy, that ought to be turned into a real con¬ 
cern for the welfare of the Church. If they are men 
of sound piety who both know and love the Church, 
they ought to be interested in the conversion of 
sinners and the upbuilding of the Church. The 
outlook is poor if the board cannot be definitely 
committed to the meeting. Let the pastor work long 
and patiently till this is accomplished. How it 
heartens a pastor to know that the whole board is 
with him, supporting him with their prayers and 
influence! Some men have the board meet with them 
for a few minutes of prayer just before the evening 
service. I have seen that work well. A steward is 
in a sense an assistant pastor. He is actually the 
spiritual adviser of his group. All the stewards 
ought to be present at every service unless prov¬ 
identially hindered, and try to get all their group 
there every service. If possible, go into the meeting 
with the solid backing of your board of stewards. 


36 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

The entire Sunday school organization ought to be 
enlisted. What the Sunday school forces ought to 
do in an evangelistic way is discussed in another 
chapter. Here I’m putting the emphasis on getting 
them to assume the right attitude toward the 
meeting. The general superintendent and all the 
departmental superintendents should be conferred 
with freely about the meeting. Then a conference of 
all officers and teachers should be held. This vast 
army of our best men and women in the Church must 
be enlisted in the revival. Indifference, apathy, or 
antipathy on the part of any of the officers or teachers 
is ruinous to the meetings. Teachers who cannot be 
enlisted in a revival campaign had better be released 
of the responsibility of teaching. The ultimate pur¬ 
pose of all Sunday school endeavor is to make useful 
Christians out of all who attend the Sunday school. 
A teacher who is not in sympathy with the Methodist 
traditions as to revivals and who does not know 
enough of Methodist history to know how God has 
honored this method of saving lost humanity 
should either learn something or retire from this 
tremendously responsible place. Whatever time or 
effort it may cost, enlist the Sunday school forces 
before you begin the meeting. 

Enlist the Epworth League. Our young people are 
really about the easiest factor in the Church to enlist 
if rightly approached. Sometimes the pastor assumes 
that his young people will not be interested in revival 
work. In this he is mistaken. When dealt with 
frankly and reasonably they can be enlisted in what¬ 
ever work they ought to do. The pastor should have 
conferences with the League cabinet. Go over the 


How to Prepare for a Revival 


37 


plans of the meeting with them. Help them to dis¬ 
cover their place in the meeting. Then go before 
the whole League in a devotional meeting and with 
all the tact and skill that God will give you capture 
that body for the meeting. In so far as is possible 
then get them to keep the calendar clear for the meet¬ 
ing. Social meetings during the revival will detract. I 
have found it no more difficult to get them to avoid so¬ 
cials during the meeting than it is to get older women 
to refrain from giving something that diverts the 
mind of the Church from the revival. When once 
thoroughly and genuinely interested in the revival 
the young people will be one of the mightiest factors 
in the meeting. Do not begin with a tirade on the 
dancing members of the League, if you have such. 
Do not begin with any negative denunciations. 
Begin with a positive program. Let them know that 
you expect active cooperation and faithful service. 
Young people rightly handled are more dependable 
than older people, some preacher's opinion to the 
contrary notwithstanding. Make your young people 
active in the revival. 

Enlist the missionary society. Whether you have 
one or many, enlist all of them. The women in 
the missionary society are usually the best people 
in the Church. They have a real heart interest in 
establishing the kingdom of God. By all means 
there should be a serious conference with them in 
preparing for the revival. They can do much to 
prevent other women of the Church from giving 
receptions and social affairs in their homes during 
the meeting. They can enlist the other members of 
their own family. They can do more than any other 


38 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

one factor in creating an atmosphere in the Church 
favorable to the revival. Get them to take the 
meeting on their hearts and make it a matter of prayer 
in all their sessions. 

Enlisting the missionary society or societies will be 
your easiest job in the preparation for the revival, 
but it must not be neglected nor ignored. Their 
hearty cooperation so easily secured is indispensable. 

A prayer program should precede the meeting. 
The Church as a whole must be enlisted in prayer for 
the meeting. Of course all the Wednesday night 
services will be given to prayer for the revival. A 
supreme effort should be made to get the entire 
Church out to the prayer meetings for some weeks 
before the protected meeting begins. Announce 
specially attractive subjects, advertise extensively, 
and do all the personal work possible to get the whole 
Church in the midweek meetings. When you get 
them there, put on the pressure of prayer for the 
revival. If these meetings can be made to glow with 
a holy enthusiasm, you have made immense progress 
in the preparation for the meeting. Group prayer 
meetings, or cottage prayer meetings in small circles, 
have been used to great advantage so frequently that 
I need not dwell on their importance. Certainly 
every family that holds family prayer ought to 
remember the meeting in the family devotion. More 
things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams 
of. If a number of devout souls pray through—that 
is, get that restful assurance that they have pre¬ 
vailed with God and the prayer has been answered— 
the victory is yours. If the whole Church is in 
expectancy, you are on vantage ground. Let them 


How to Prepare for a Revival 


39 


know that this is a cooperative meeting, God and 
the Church cooperating for a sweeping revival. God 
will furnish the power if we will furnish the obedience 
and the faith. 

These and other steps that the pastor will see 
needed in his own community are some of the neces¬ 
sary steps toward getting ready for a revival. If 
the pastor is too economical with his energy to make 
such an outlay of it for a revival, he is too lazy for 
efficient service and may be too lazy to get into the 
kingdom of heaven. There is no excellence without 
great labor in any sphere of life. We honor God 
most by doing our part best. Make every possible 
preparation for the meeting. 


CHAPTER IV 


PREPARATION FOR REVIVAL: THE 
SURVEY 

The purpose of the evangelistic survey by a Church is to 
discover just what the obligations and responsibilities of that 
Church are from the point of view of evangelism. In other 
words, it is the purpose of such survey to find out for just 
whom the Church is responsible that it does not already have 
in its membership. It is to discover whom it should reach to 
save from sin and for membership in the Church, where they 
are located, and their present religious status in order that a 
program based upon the real facts in the case may be formu¬ 
lated that will meet the actual situation confronting it. 

It is the purpose of this chapter to set forth in a general 
way the method by which this information can be secured 
by any Church. In the first place, it may be said that the 
Church, as a whole, should be committed to the proposition 
of making the survey. A fundamental principle in making 
the survey is to have the organization affected by it to be 
thoroughly committed to it. This is necessary to get the 
largest results from the standpoint of information. It is 
likewise necessary in order to be of real value to the organiza¬ 
tion for carrying out whatever program seems to be wise in 
the light of the facts discovered by it. 

In order to get the Church thoroughly committed to having 
an evangelistic survey made, it will be necessary in most cases 
to inform the Church as to what such a survey is and why it 
should be made. This is clearly the mission of the pastor. 

The first thing to be done by him, if it has not already been 
done, is to get thoroughly acquainted with the evangelistic 
program for this year and to study carefully the organization 
proposed for carrying it out. Especially should he be thor¬ 
oughly conversant with the evangelistic phase of this program 
which plans to present Jesus Christ to every one of our un¬ 
saved constituency. The details of this plan should be com¬ 
pletely mastered by him. 

( 40 ) 


41 


Preparation for Revival: The Survey 

He should study it and pray over it until he is gripped by 
its challenge, realizes his own and his Church’s opportunity 
and responsibility, becomes enthusiastic over it, and then 
seeks to impart his enthusiasm and inspiration to his Church. 
The unequivocal and enthusiastic leadership of the pastor 
is a prime requisite for making such a survey. This will be 
necessary in order to stimulate the interest and enlistment 
of his members in making it. 

The next step is to get the board of stewards committed 
to it. This will give the matter official sanction. After this 
has been done the whole matter should be presented to the 
Church and get it committed to the proposition. This is 
quite necessary if the best results are to be had in getting the 
desired information and if the largest results are to accrue 
to the Church evangelistically. Generally speaking, the 
results in these respects are in proportion to the interest 
manifested on the part of the Church. The pastor should 
create such interest on its part that one hundred per cent 
efficiency be reached by it, that it go “over the top” in winning 
its unsaved constituency during the year. 

The next step is making the survey itself. This should be 
done by the local Church evangelistic committee itself, with 
the addition of such other persons as it may deem advisable 
to add for this specific purpose. 

If there is no committee on evangelism in the Church, one 
should be nominated by the pastor. It is more advisable to 
make selections by personal interviews than by calling 
for volunteers. Hand-picked fruit is always the best. When 
volunteers are called for at random, it frequently occurs that 
the least efficient are the quickest to respond, and as a result 
the work is not done satisfactorily. 

After the workers have been selected they should be care¬ 
fully instructed as to just what they are to do. A meeting 
should be called for this purpose at an hour when all can 
attend. The minister should explain the blanks to be used, 
being careful to consider each item separately until the work¬ 
ers understand just what it signifies. The importance of 
each should be stressed. 

The investigators should be urged to get one hundred per 


42 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

cent cQrrect information in order that one hundred per cent 
efficiency in getting results in the evangelistic campaign may 
be obtained. Their survey will be valuable in proportion 
to the correctness of the data secured. 

The next step is the assignment of the investigators to the 
territory they are to survey. The question naturally arises: 
How much territory should be assigned to each investigator? 
That will depend upon the largeness of the parish, the num¬ 
ber of workers, the time in which the survey is to be made, 
and the time each person has to give to the work. About 
the only rule that can be given is that each one should be 
given such an assignment that the whole survey can be 
completed in the shortest possible time in which the work 
can be done carefully. The time fixed should be brief. Hit 
the iron while it is hot. If too much time is allowed, interest 
lags, other things intervene, and the work, as a rule, is not 
well done or not done at all. 

Experience has shown that the following method is the best 
in making evangelistic surveys in Churches: After the survey 
committee has been organized and the territory has been 
assigned, the Sunday school survey should be made first. 
The special blanks for information in this respect should be 
filled out by the Sunday school teachers. They should be 
able to give the desired information. If they do not have it 
already, they should be required to get it by visiting the 
homes of their pupils if necessary. If teachers are given these 
blanks on Sunday, they should be able to fill them in by 
Wednesday or latest by Friday. A meeting of the survey 
committee should be scheduled, at which the reports should 
be made relative to the Sunday school survey. Each investi¬ 
gator should check off those families in his or her territory 
concerning which the desired information has been secured 
on the Sunday school blanks. It is not necessary to go to 
those families again. This having been done, a time should 
be agreed upon by all, at which all the investigators will go 
out to get the information concerning the families not reached 
through the Sunday school survey. If the meeting for the 
Sunday school report was held Friday night, Sunday after¬ 
noon would probably be a good time for the family visitation 
to be made. Announcement to that effect should be made at 


Preparation for Revival: The Survey 


43 


Sunday school and the Church service Sunday morning. If 
the survey committee has been thoroughly trained and 
organized, it will be able to do most of the work in one after¬ 
noon. One of the Churches which made such a survey under 
one of the survey directors completed the home visitation 
part of it in two hours. 

If all the investigators are not able to finish their assign¬ 
ments in one afternoon, the time should be extended. A 
definite time for a committee meeting for reports should be 
set. Every worker should give a report as to the amount 
of work done and time required to finish the assignment. The 
following Wednesday evening is probably the best time for 
such a meeting. Another time of meeting should be set, at 
which all reports are to be made in full and the results be 
checked up and tabulated from all the cards. All prospective 
members revealed by the survey shall be classified as follows: 
(1) Placing the names of unidentified Methodists on blue 
cards; (2) the unconverted who express a preference for the 
Methodist Church on brown cards; (3) and those who have 
no Church preference on white cards. The tabulation of the 
results should be carefully made and given to the pastor to 
file. All the cards and blanks are to be preserved by him for 
reference and for use in the evangelistic campaign. They 
will be of inestimable value, as we shall see later. One 
thing remains to be said, however. The matter of the length 
of time to make the survey and the number of meetings for 
reports will have to be governed by the local conditions. A 
fundamental principle is adaptation. This general principle 
is that the work should be completed in the shortest possible 
time in which accurate and complete returns can be secured. 

The question naturally arises in this connection as to the 
boundaries of the territory to be surveyed. Just how large 
is the territory that should be covered by the survey each 
Church is to make? Many Churches have probably never 
thought in definite terms of the bounds of the community 
for which it is responsible. Many pastors have probably 
never drawn a diagram of their parish. The following sug¬ 
gestion is made in this respect. A Church should consider 
its parish the territory lying within the bounds of lines drawn 
which connect the families farthest removed who attend that 


44 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

Church with some regularity and are not within similar bounds 
of another Church of the same denomination. If the Church 
is in a city, the bounds can be determined by the blocks with¬ 
in such connecting lines. If it be in the country, connecting 
lines drawn along the public roads between such families will 
indicate the parish or territory to be surveyed. The unaf¬ 
filiated and unevangelized persons within such boundaries 
are the Church’s responsibility. 

In conclusion, it may be said that the pastor is the key 
man in respect to making an evangelistic survey. The atti¬ 
tude and relationship he assumes will in nearly every instance 
determine its value. In order for it to be made and to be of 
real and the largest value he will need to prepare the way 
for it, launch it, guide it, and push it to its completion. If 
this is done, it will be found to be of tremendous value. 

The question has often been asked: ‘‘Why make a survey?” 
Some have said: “We have had revivals before, and we did 
not have any survey. They were successful ones, too. Why 
this new departure and added work?” 

The question has already been answered in part by direct 
statement or pointed suggestion. It may be well to consider 
it more carefully and directly at this point. If the plan 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to reach all 
of our unevangelized constituency is to be realized this 
year, the most efficient methods will have to be used. The 
plan is a very ambitious one. Nothing comparable to this 
has hitherto been undertaken by any denomination as far as 
the author knows. But this is a new day in the Church. It 
has learned to undertake big things, and just because it has 
dared to do so it has accomplished them. The raising of 
thirty-five million dollars by our Church was considered by 
some a Utopian dream, by others as human folly, but by 
others as a possibility and duty. They had the vision. They 
had the faith. They gave themselves to the task. Because 
they did so God gave them the fulfillment of their vision and 
more. But it was not done without plans, without a carefully 
thought-out and detailed program. The same conditions 
prevailed respecting the evangelistic campaign. To reach 
all our unsaved constituency for Christ and the Church is a 
tremendous task. The most efficient plans and methods will 


Preparation for Revival: The Survey 


45 


have to be studied carefully. The harvest must be located. 
Each Church must have a careful study of its community in 
order to find out its responsibilities, to locate them, and then 
devise means and methods for fulfilling them. 

It is just at this point that the survey comes in. It is a 
careful study of the field. It will reveal the Church’s re¬ 
sponsibilities. It will locate each of them. It will discover 
their religious attitude. It will give a clue to the best method 
of approaching them. These things make it of incalculable 
value. 

That the survey reveals the Churches’ responsibility is 
quite evident. It is quite true that the responsibilities of the 
Churches vary greatly. That fact in itself is of value. It 
jgoes to show that one Church cannot measure its responsi¬ 
bility by that of another Church. Conditions are different 
in every community. The evangelistic survey’s value in one 
respect lies in that it reveals the exact situation from the 
evangelistic point of view on the community or parish 
survey. By making such a survey each Church will know 
just what its actual responsibility is, just how many persons 
it should reach for Christ and the Church, just how many 
prospective members it has. 

The survey will not only disclose the above, but it will 
give the exact location of the prospects, the unevangelized. 
It does this by discovering their exact address and residence. 
This is of no little value. It makes possible the pastor’s 
calling on them as well as the easy assignment to personal 
workers or other aids in the meetings. 

The survey has a further value in that it also discloses to a 
certain extent the attitude of the various prospects. A study 
of the cards used will make this point plain. If a person 
prefers the Methodist Church, that fact is of value if it is 
known by the one who approaches him. If he has no prefer¬ 
ence or prefers some other Church or denomination, the meth¬ 
od of approach would vary in accordance with that fact. 
The interviewer, being aware of the particular attitude of the 
individual, is forearmed and will be much better able to ap¬ 
proach and inter iew the prospect than if no such information 
were at hand. The survey gives the pastor, evangelist, or 
personal worker the clew of approach to the prospect. This 


46 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

makes for efficiency and success in winning the prospect for 
Christ and the Church. 

All these factors are important. They are all discovered 
by the survey. Being known, they make possible such wise 
planning and organization and direction that the largest 
possible results may be attained. 

From the preliminary surveys that have been made of 
typical Churches, it is estimated that there are two and a 
half million people for whom the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, South, is immediately responsible. However, it 
should be understood that these surveys do not include a 
vast number of people in territory where we have no organi¬ 
zation and for which we are also responsible. There are at 
least one and one-half million of potential Methodists among 
this unchurched mass, making our total responsibility nearly 
four millions. It is, therefore, desired that each Church 
measure up to its own particular responsibility. In order to 
thus measure up, it will have to discover just what its evan¬ 
gelistic responsibility is. This the survey will do. Herein 
is the incalculable value of the survey and the reason why 
each pastor should make one of his Church or Churches. 
(A. C. Zumbrunnen.) 

Besides all that has been said, hnd much more 
that might be said, as to the value of surveys, this 
remains to be said: If made annually, it would stop a 
large leakage from which we have always suffered. 
It is a well-known fact to those who have worked 
on surveys that you can likely get those whom you 
find during the first year of their residence in a new 
place to transfer their membership. But those who 
have resided there for several years with membership 
elsewhere will not likely consent to become identified 
with the local Church. They have formed affiliations 
which drift them from the Church. They have lost 
the habit of Church attendance. Where they can be 
found the first year (and they will always be found 


Preparation for Revival: The Survey 47 

the first year if the annual survey is made), they can 
be saved to the Church. Otherwise the Church 
from which they came finally takes a notion to 
“clean up the roll,” and they, in common with many 
others, are dropped as lost sight of. Thus there go 
off our roll many thousands each year who should not 
be lost to the Church. In the year 1919 we received 
into the Church on profession of faith 97,000 people. 
But we came out with a net loss of 12,000. This 
means that 109,000 somehow got off our rolls. We 
lose by death about 30,000 per annum. (That is, 
supposing our people die at the average rate.) 
Take 30,000 from 109,000, and it leaves 79,000 that 
got off our rolls otherwise than by death in the year 
1919. Such a leakage would bankrupt any commer¬ 
cial firm in the world. We let too many get away. 
It is our business not only to get people saved and 
into the Church, but to keep them saved and keep 
them in the Church. The annual survey will save 
to the Church anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 per 
annum. Is it not worth while to make a survey for 
that alone? In the future let no Church feel that it 
has done its duty unless it has made the annual 
survey. 

The following card is suggested as the form for 
the house-to-house visitation. Let each pastor have 
as many of these printed as he may need for his 
annual survey: 


EVANGELISTIC SURVEY 

HOME VISITATION SCHEDULE 



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Who Furnished Information? Name.Address. 


































































































Preparation for Revival: The Survey 49 

When the house-to-house survey shall have been 
completed, transfer the names to the small cards as 
follows: 

Place on the blue card all names of unidentified 
Methodists—that is, the Methodists living in your 
community whose membership is elsewhere. 


UNIDENTIFIED METHODISTS 

Name- Age. 

Address._ 

--- Phone. 

Information. 


On the brown card place the names of all uncon¬ 
verted people who have expressed a preference for 
the Methodist Church. 


PREFER METHODIST CHURCH 

Name___ Age. 

Address._ 

__ Phone. 

Information_ y _ 


4 



































50 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

On the white card place the names of those who 
are not Church members and have no Church 
preference. 



When thus tabulated and classified they are ready 
for the personal work committees, which will be 
organized to follow up this work. The pastor should 
have these three sets of small cards ready for his 
committees when the meeting begins. 

People ignorant as to how to follow up surveys 
are sometimes prejudiced against surveys. But those 
who have seen them made and followed up according 
to the plans suggested know the immense value of 
the survey. The more accurate the survey, the more 
useful it will be in the revival campaign. Strive 
for perfection in this as in everything else. But even 
an imperfect survey beats none. A survey taken 
even in a slovenly way will discover valuable data 
which may be utilized in the revival campaign. 
Let no pastor and no people say that they know 
everybody and therefore a survey is useless. The 
survey always surprises those who think they know. 
There is no community, however small, where the 















51 


Preparation for Revival: The Survey 

pastor or any one else knows without a survey the 
potential constituency of that Church. Make the 
survey. Follow it up. 

One of the fundamental purposes of the survey is to dis¬ 
cover existing conditions, to get the exact facts in the case. 
These facts are the basis upon which the program is to be 
based. 

If the survey does not get the exact facts, a proper and ade¬ 
quate program of procedure cannot be formulated. In brief, 
a survey has value in proportion to the accuracy of the 
information secured by it. 

In devising the cards to be used in making these evangelistic 
surveys the author sought to make them perfectly intelligible 
to those who would use them. Only items of importance were 
put on them, and an attempt was made to make each heading 
definite, have an edge to it, so it would not be misinterpreted. 
Experience has taught us that some investigators are having 
some difficulty in filling in the blanks. For this reason 
a detailed interpretation of them is given here and one of 
each partially filled out, so that there should be no difficulty 
in using them and getting them correctly filled out by the 
investigators. 

As has been suggested before, the blank used for Sunday 
school information should be filled out by the teachers of 
the various classes. They are probably better prepared to 
give this information than any one else. In case they do 
not know the details, they should be required to get them, even 
if it means a call at the pupil’s home. One blank should be 
filled out for each scholar in the school, from the youngest 
to the oldest. It may be asked: “Why fill out a blank for a 
scholar in the Beginners’ Class?” Because some member or 
members of the family may be unsaved. The fact that a 
child is in the Sunday school makes every member of the 
family that Church’s responsibility. The child has opened 
the door for the Church to that home. It has fixed that 
home’s evangelistic responsibility upon the Church which 
it has entered as a scholar in its Sunday school. 

The same holds respecting any scholar at any age. Suppose 
the scholar is a father sixty-five. He may have an unsaved 


52 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

son of twelve, fifteen, or twenty-five years of age at home. 
This son is that Church’s responsibility at which the father 
attends Sunday school, unless the son is vitally related to 
some other Church. In the latter jnstance he is not the 
Church’s responsibility where the father attends, but that 
one to which he is vitally realted. 

The “Scholar’s Name” means not only the Christian name, 
but the whole name. “Age” needs no explanation. “Ad¬ 
dress” means that of the parents or where the scholar receives 
mail. The name of the teacher of the class of which the scholar 
is a member should go in the next space. If the scholar is a 
member of any Church, the name of that particular Church 
should be written in the next space. If not a member of a 
Church, the space may be left blank. 

The rest of the blank is for information of the other members 
of the scholar’s family. They should be written in plainly 
and the surname be placed first. The age is a very important 
item and should be secured if possible. This can be done in 
most cases. Its importance lies in the fact that it will be 
helpful to the pastor to know what age the unevangelized 
are. The method of approach will have to be quite different 
to those of different ages. The approach to a girl of twelve 
would not be the same as that of a man of fifty, nor that of 
a young man of eighteen to that of a mother of forty. It is 
important to know the age for another reason also. In con¬ 
ducting the evangelistic campaign the pastor may want to 
assign certain prospects to personal workers for interviews. 
To know the age is very important in order to know to whom 
to assign the prospect and for the personal worker to know 
how to approach those assigned to him. If tact is used, the 
exact age can be secured in most instances. If the exact 
age cannot be had, an approximate one should be put in. 
One investigator who had part in one of our more intensive 
and extensive social surveys secured the ages of nearly 
every person. When asked how he did this, he said: “When 
I came to that item I frequently suggested an age; not always 
the one thought to be the right one, however. If it wasn’t 
the right one, the party interviewed nearly always hastened 
to correct me. So I got what I wanted.” Tact is a valuable 
asset and where used good results will be obtained. 


53 


Preparation for Revival: The Survey 

A final suggestion in closing this chapter is that the pastor 
fill out a few cards of families, the conditions of which he is 
perfectly familiar with. That will probably be the best 
way to understand the blanks and fit him for interpreting 
them to his investigators and instructing them in their use. 
It will add to their efficiency if he will require them to do the 
same thing and hand the cards back to him for criticism 
before they begin their work. We learn to do by doing. If 
the investigators are familiar with the blanks, they will be 
much more efficient in their work and do it more easily. 
(A. C. Zumbrunnen.) 


CHAPTER V 

EVANGELISTIC PREACHING 

The supreme need of this sin-cursed world is the 
evangelistic message. The most important work 
ever committed to mortal man is the privilege of 
telling the good news to a lost world. The heart’s 
desire and prayer to God for every man called to this 
work should be to know how to tell it most effectively. 
That some man may be helped to tell more success¬ 
fully the story is the purpose of this chapter. 

The evangelistic message has sometimes been too 
narrow and sometimes too broad. It should not be 
too highly specialized or too latitudinarian. The 
message is too narrow when it is a mere superficial 
appeal to the emotions. Pathetic stories may be so 
told as to suffuse the eyes with tears when there is 
no permanent conviction lodged in the heart. The 
effectiveness of a sermon must not be measured by 
the amount of briny fluid it makes the lachrymal 
glands secrete. The preacher who stirs the emotions 
by other means than the power of the truth will pro¬ 
duce only ephemeral results. Creating a spasmodic 
spurt not founded in truth is certain to be followed 
by a lapse into a state of indifference and lethargy 
wherein the last state of the man is worse than the 
first. It is this method that brings evangelism into 
disrepute with some right-thinking people. The 
preacher, be he pastor-evangelist or professional 
evangelist, whose stock in trade is a series of pathetic 
(54) 


Evangelistic Preaching 


55 


stories ought either to replenish his stock or go out 
of the evangelistic business. 

The fun makers' message is too narrow. The man 
with an evangelistic message is neither comedian 
nor clown, neither babbler nor buffoon, neither joker 
nor jabberer, neither mimic nor mountebank. The 
risibilities may sometimes be stirred to advantage, 
but to play too excessively upon them makes it well- 
nigh impossible to deliver the gospel message with 
becoming gravity and dignity. He is ambassador on 
the most serious mission ever committed to mortal. 

Likewise his message is too narrow whose rep¬ 
ertoire consists of a concatenation of personal 
experiences and observations, in which the speaker 
figures as the hero. This is especially odious and 
intolerable if the personal experiences are the same 
old stale chestnuts that were on duty before that 
speaker was born. By common consent a multitude 
of these stories ought to be superannuated. Peace 
be to their memories, provided they lie silent in their 
charnel houses! 

Any sort of preaching that falls short of presenting 
the whole gospel is too narrow. Any is too narrow 
that presents a distorted or syncopated gospel. 
Ragtime music and ragtime preaching belong to the 
same category and seem to have affinity for each 
other. The sooner both are dumped on the junk 
pile, the better off humanity will be. 

The too narrow message, however, is no more ade¬ 
quate than the message that is too broad. The aim¬ 
less and inapplicable message will be even less 
effective than the narrow message. The narrow 
message does often produce immediate visible re- 


56 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 


suits, ephemeral though they be, but this much 
cannot be said for the broad message. It produces 
no results, visible or invisible, direct or remote, for 
time or eternity. 

That message is too broad for evangelistic purposes 
that revels in abstruse speculations or deals in tech¬ 
nicalities. That sermon is too broad that seeks to 
make a display of erudition, or gives an exhibition 
of linguistic pyrotechnics, or unloads upon a long- 
suffering audience a disproportionate amount of 
“words of learned length and thundering sound/' 
His messages are too broad who goes out of his way 
to show his break with tradition and dogma and offers 
this as a guarantee of scholarship. These pulpit 
peddlers of pale perhapses ought to be converted 
and become pungent preachers of proved principles. 
These pedantic propagators of pestiferous pre¬ 
posterousness ought to right-about face and become 
powerful promulgators of primitive postulates. Nega¬ 
tive preaching never brought a penitent to the altar 
nor made men cry out: “Men and brethren, what 
must we do to be saved?" 

What, then, is the evangelistic message? Could 
it be focalized into a sentence? The evangelistic 
message is the whole gospel preached in primitive 
simplicity to the whole man by a man who has himself 
been made whole by this selfsame gospel • 

By the whole gospel I do not mean merely preach¬ 
ing the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, putting 
equal emphasis on all truths. Men may preach 
truths from the Bible forever, but never preach an 
evangelistic message. Men may preach ethics and 
reform and a thousand other important things and 


Evangelistic Preaching 57 

yet miss the heart and center of the gospel. The 
great central fact is redemption in Jesus Christ. 
Everything in both the Old and the New Testament 
must be related to him. He is our Saviour, Advocate, 
Friend—our all. We are complete in him. “My 
God shall supply all your needs according to his 
riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” All that we need 
either the Old Testament or the New Testament 
for is to unfold, bring out, set forth, assert, illus¬ 
trate, elucidate, and accentuate the fact that Jesus 
Christ is the Saviour of the world. All the use we 
have for theology, for ethics, for doctrines is simply 
to make Jesus known to a lost world. 

Everything we know and have felt must be related 
to Jesus Christ. With Christ as the spinal column 
of our theological system all subsidiary doctrines 
can be arranged harmoniously subservient to this 
great central truth. When the preacher thus gets 
his mental and moral acquisitions arranged and 
classified, he will at all times be a living, pulsating 
evangelist, with Christ in all, over all, and through 
all. That is all the message we have, and it is all 
that this world needs. The world is hungry, starving, 
dying for this message. 

“Tis all my business here below 
To cry, ‘Behold the Lamb/ ” 

The Christ must be presented in primitive sim¬ 
plicity if we would have the primitive power. One 
of the conspicuous and outstanding miracles of the 
ages is the rapidity with which Christianity spread 
during the first two or three centuries. If there had 
been no abatement, the world would have been 
Christian before our day. This aggressive propa- 


58 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

ganda is worthy of careful study. What is it that 
has diluted our message? How did we lose the in¬ 
tensity and invincibleness that the message had 
during the first centuries? 

If one will study one of Peter's sermons along 
by the side of one in the homiletic literature of to¬ 
day, he will discover one of the differences between 
early-day preaching and the preaching of to-day. 
In the homiletic literature of to-day he will find 
speculation, theories, erudite disquisitions of things 
abstruse, and a more or less denatured, diluted gospel. 
In Peter's sermons he will find a directness, a sim¬ 
plicity that is incomparable. Peter had seen his 
Lord. His heart was all aglow. He had felt the 
divine touch. He was so filled and thrilled with the 
experience that he felt impelled, propelled, com¬ 
pelled to tell it. 

A man overmastered by a mighty truth cannot 
tell it in a vague, indirect way. The more intense his 
conviction, the more direct, incisive, and pungent 
his message will be. It is high time for us to strip our 
messages of the incrustations of theory and bar¬ 
nacles of dogma and present the living Christ in 
such a way that men shall cry out: “What must 
we do to be saved?" The preacher should be so 
possessed, even obsessed, with the vision of Christ 
that he shall feel that he can but speak the things 
which he has seen and heard. Metaphysical specu¬ 
lation devitalizes the gospel. Let the preacher to-day 
be in possession of the same experiences that Paul 
and Peter had, preach the same simple gospel with 
that direct, overpowering earnestness, and Pauline 
and Petrine power will be exhibited. 


Evangelistic Preaching 


59 


Important as it is to preach the whole gospel in 
primitive simplicity, it is no more important than that 
the gospel should be preached to the whole man. The 
partially saved people that fill our Churches are 
samples of what this fragmentary gospel preaching 
will produce. Man is a thinker, and we have a 
message for the thinker which will save the thinker. 
Man is a lover, and we have a message that will save 
the lover. Man is a chooser, and we have a message 
that will save the free moral agent. If we reach 
only the thinker, we have a cold, calculating type of 
Christianity that may wreck itself on the icebergs 
of rationality. If we save only the lover, we shall 
have a volatile, impulsive type of Christian who 
may upset his boat in the shallow, equatorial waters 
of emotionalism. If we save only the chooser, we 
make an ultra-pragmatic character, who, while use¬ 
ful, may be void of the mystic element so essential 
to spiritual life. It is only when we present the gos¬ 
pel to the thinker, the lover, and the chooser in the 
proper proportions that we may expect to produce 
the symmetrical Christian. 

The gospel has truth sufficiently deep and pro¬ 
found to tax the most masterful mind. To know 
Him and to grapple with the eternal verities involved 
in redemption will enable the mind to rise to those 
sublime heights where one can breathe the pure 
ozone of intellectuality and think the thoughts of 
God after him. The gospel has in it the greatest 
power, the greatest dynamic for moving the affec¬ 
tions known in this world. Go gather together all 
the tragedies in drama and poetry, all the pathos 
known in the oratory of legislative hall and the 


60 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 


world's forums, and mold them into one. But they 
will sink into insignificance when compared to the 
power of the story of Jesus and his love. It has sub¬ 
dued more stubborn wills and melted more stony 
hearts than all other powers in the universe. Yes, 
Jesus Christ adequately preached has power to fer¬ 
tilize the brain, fire the heart, and dominate the will. 

Moreover, Jesus Christ fully preached takes do¬ 
minion over the whole life. We have sometimes 
preached him as having dominion over the so-called 
religious life, but given him no dominion over the 
so-called secular life. There is no secular life unless 
it be in illegitimate pursuits. Jesus proposes to domi¬ 
nate not only the religious segment of our lives, but 
the whole life—not on Sundays and Wednesday 
nights, but for seven days in the week. In business 
and professional life, in manual labor and common 
drudgery, Jesus must have dominion no less than in 
what we call the religious part of our lives. Business 
life, political life, commercial life must come under 
the dominion of Jesus Christ. If Jesus is to be Lord 
at all, he must be Lord of all. 

“Bring forth the royal diadem, 

And crown him Lord of all.” 

It is more important that we preach the whole 
gospel to the whole man than that we have a whole 
man as medium for the gospel. The writer is no self- 
appointed censor of our brethren in the ministry. 
He admires them above all men on earth. There is 
no suggestion here of an “I am better than thou" 
spirit. The writer knows most of the shortcomings 
of the ministry by taking an inventory of his own. 


Evangelistic Preaching 


61 


One of the most outstanding facts and lamentable 
facts in the history of Christianity is that its propa¬ 
gators have not always themselves been truly saved 
men. Men only partially saved, fragments of men, 
cannot be proper media for the transmission of gospel 
truth. A full gospel cannot filter through men whose 
lives are marred by selfishness and whose horizons 
have been limited and whose visions have been 
obscured by sin. A selfish man cannot preach and 
illustrate in his life the altruism of the gospel. The 
mercenary man, with an eye out for the best chance, 
cannot preach the unearthly gospel of Jesus Christ. 
The ambitious man, lusting for place and power, 
cannot preach, much less illustrate, the self-immola¬ 
tion of the gospel. The unbrotherly or envious man 
cannot expound the seventeenth chapter of John. 
The sublime prayer offered therein has not been 
answered in his life. 

How the imperfections of the ministry must grieve 
the great heart of God! How great the need for 
crucified men! Can our preachers truly say, “I am 
crucified with Christ”? Are we as impervious to 
the appeals of the world as a corpse? Does the 
conduct of the average minister show that he is 
dead to the world and alive only to God? The 
desideratum of the hour is a ministry wholly re¬ 
deemed, a ministry that illustrates the gospel. It 
yet remains to be seen what God can do with such a 
ministry. 


CHAPTER VI 
JESUS THE EVANGELIST 

The relationships Jesus sustained to men and the 
functions he performed are multitudinous. Among 
the ancients the habit obtained of giving persons 
names which described the relationship they filled 
and the functions they performed. Names were 
descriptive terms, more like adjectives than nouns, 
in the primitive civilizations. This accounts for the 
many names applied to Jesus in the Old and New 
Testaments. Some one has discovered more than 
two hundred different appellations applied to Jesus 
in the Holy Scriptures, each one expressing a rela¬ 
tionship or describing a function. Yet these more 
than two hundred names do not exhaust all the 
relationships he sustains to us, nor do they describe 
all his functions. The name “evangelist” does not 
appear among these, and yet Jesus was an evangelist. 

To those to whom vocational evangelists are 
odious, it may seem a little shocking to call Jesus 
an evangelist. Because some evangelists do unethical 
and disreputable things is no justification for a whole¬ 
sale condemnation of evangelists. Some pastors 
do unethical and disgraceful things, but it would be 
unfair to make all pastors carry this odium. Some 
presiding elders do things contrary to our notions 
of propriety, but that does not justify a wholesale 
condemnation of presiding elders. Some bishops do 
things that arouse our resentment, but shall we 
censure all bishops for the sins of a few? The whole- 
( 62 ) 


63 


Jesus the Evangelist 

sale condemnation of any whole class because of the 
sins of a few is manifestly unfair, unbrotherly, un¬ 
wise, unchristian, and ought to be abolished. 

Jesus was an evangelist par excellence. If we define 
an evangelist as one who brings good news (and that 
is its etymological meaning), certainly Jesus is the 
preeminent evangelist of all ages. The angels in 
announcing his advent into this world said, “ Behold, 
I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be 
to all people.” This was the most glorious news 
that ever fell on mortal ears. The message of love 
and good cheer which Jesus brought filled this world 
with new hope and great joy. 

In common parlance (and common parlance has 
more to do with fixing the intent and extent of words 
than etymology), by an evangelist we mean one who 
preaches the gospel with special reference to immedi¬ 
ate results, one who devotes his time to getting people 
committed to Christ. According to this definition, 
Jesus was an evangelist. A careful study will reveal 
that Jesus gave much of his time to this very thing. 

As an evangelist Jesus had none of the common 
faults of that vocation. The two dangers that men¬ 
ace every vocational evangelist are the mercenary 
motive and egotism. Stirred by the £clat and 
glamour of a great revival people pay very liberally, 
vastly more so than under the ordinary regime of 
Church work. An evangelist must live very close 
to the throne, else he may be tempted to get a hanker¬ 
ing for more money when people pay it so freely and 
joyously. In a great revival the atmospheric con¬ 
ditions are better for preaching than in the cold, 
formal services from time to time. Any preacher 


64 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

can preach better in the glow and fervor of a great 
revival than in a merely formal service. Receptive 
people tell the evangelist they never heard such 
preaching before in all their lives. Part of this 
feeling is due to the environment and much of it 
to the conditions in their own souls. A very wise 
evangelist must know this and not take the extrava¬ 
gant commendations too seriously. If he takes them 
seriously, his danger will be vanity and egotism. Any 
man who can engage in vocational evangelism and 
steer clear of mercenary motives and egotism is a 
saint. Thank God for all who are saintly! Jesus 
certainly never yielded to temptations of this sort. 
In all probability no other person who ever spoke 
comforting words to a heartbroken world received 
so many commendations as did Jesus. It could not 
have been otherwise than that a grateful humanity 
which had not heard such words before would tell 
him of their appreciations, would laud his talks, com¬ 
mend his deeds, and embarrass him with a Niagara 
of compliments. These were not significant enough 
to get into the record. Had he encouraged it, no 
doubt he could have acquired property from the 
gifts offered him. The precious ointment with which 
he was anointed is but an incident showing what 
grateful humanity would have done for him in a 
material way had he permitted it.' * Whatever 
battles he had along this line we do not know, for 
he did not choose to tell us. Of this one thing we 
are sure: He never showed vanity nor was there ever 
the least suspicion of a mercenary motive. 

Jesus was not a narrow evangelist. He took the 
quotation from Isaiah to describe his work as an 


Jesus the Evangelist 


65 


evangelist. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, be¬ 
cause he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to 
the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken¬ 
hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and 
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty 
them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year 
of the Lord.” That was his platform. After he 
closed the book and all eyes were fastened on him 
he [said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your 
ears.” This platform might be carefully studied by 
every one doing evangelistic work. It is broad 
enough to include every legitimate form of evangel¬ 
ism. This old heart-broken world, this disappointed 
world, this sad world needs evangelists with this 
platform. 

Jesus had no stereotyped methods, had no elabo¬ 
rate creedal requirements, and adapted his methods 
to suit community or individual needs. He was a 
popular preacher. The common people heard him 
gladly. “And seeing the multitudes, he went up 
into a mountain.” People thronged about him 
wherever he went. Many thousands heard his 
messages. So far as we know he had no “mourners' 
bench,” nor altar service. This may shock some 
Methodists who do not know that personal surrenders 
can be made to Christ without the formality of an 
altar service. Only God knows how many people 
heard the Word and were saved under the public 
ministry of Jesus. In the very nature of the case 
no minute record could be kept of these conversions. 
Jesus had no obsession for counting converts any¬ 
way. His passion was for getting them saved, with 
no undue regard to the arithmetic connected with it. 
5 


66 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

The preacher or layman who imagines that a certain 
formula must be gone through with before we can 
be certain of a conversion ought to study afresh 
the evangelism of Jesus and of John Wesley. Each 
(if I may dare place along beside the Great Evangelist 
one of the greatest among human evangelists), 
Jesus and John Wesley, preached to the multitudes, 
sowed beside all waters, and no doubt thousands 
heard, believed, and were saved that gave no pub¬ 
lic manifestation. In these great promiscuous 
throngs there were people, high and low, rich and 
poor, moral and immoral, who for the first time heard 
the Word, believed on his name, and were made the 
sons and daughters of the living God. Their or¬ 
thodoxy was not questioned and they were not 
required to subscribe to an elaborated creed. When 
we come to study the individual cases we shall find 
one thing and only one that was always required, 
“a personal faith in him as their Saviour.” This was 
and is the sine qua non to New Testament evangel¬ 
ism. 

Jesus the Evangelist with the Woman of Samaria .— 
This was one of the most delicate and difficult cases 
on record. Here was a woman, and at that time in 
the world's history it was a more embarrassing situa¬ 
tion to be seen alone with a woman than now. To 
the Jews it was still more embarrassing because she 
was a Samaritan, a despised mongrel race pecul¬ 
iarly odious to the Jews. Moreover she was an 
abandoned woman—a notorious character in the 
community; one who had lost all that is highest, 
holiest, and divinest in womanhood; an outcast 
with whom no respectable person dare be seen. 


Jesus the Evangelist 


67 


Jesus, knowing all this, dared to break over all con¬ 
ventionalities, all sex prejudices, and seek to save 
this lost soul. Often the soul-winner must do this. 
Conventionality has no right to set up a barrier 
between you and a lost soul. A brave worker can 
dare to ignore these conventionalities and get to the 
soul before it is too late. Jesus did this very thing. 

His method of approach is most interesting. He 
did not rebuke her for her sins, nor did he remind 
her of her fallen condition. She had had reminders 
enough of that. He did not begin with spiritual 
things. He began by making a request of her. 
Here the diagnostician and psychologist showed his 
rarest skill. Fortunate the personal worker who can 
ask the incorrigible boy or wayward girl that he 
wants to reach to do him a personal favor. Hu¬ 
manity is so constructed that it loves those whom it 
has served and hates those whom it has wronged. 
This basic fact in human nature ought to be ever 
kept in mind by those who would be efficient in 
soul-winning. Those who have served you most 
love you best. Those who have done you a mean 
trick will never love you. For reasons unknown 
to themselves they will hate you. Jesus amazes 
this outcast woman by asking a favor from her. 
To her Jesus was a Jew. Perhaps his dress, speech, 
and personal appearance made that impression on 
her. “How is it that thou, being a Jew, asketh 
drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the 
Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans/’ This 
gave Jesus an opportunity to explain a little. He told 
her that if she only knew who it was asking a drink 
from her of this water she would ask him for water 


68 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

that would.slake her thirst for all time. This was some¬ 
thing novel and something useful. It awakened 
an interest. Her curiosity and self-interest were 
both appealed to. Was there ever a more adroit 
piece of evangelism? “Sir, give me this water, that 
I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.” Jesus 
then said, “Go call thy husband.” She answered, 
“I have no husband.” Then Jesus for the first time 
gave her an intimation of his supernatural knowl¬ 
edge. She at once perceived that he was a religious 
teacher. Then came a crisis. She trumped up a 
controverted question. How often workers have 
failed by being diverted from the main issue to some 
stale nonessential question! Who was Melchizedek? 
What is the proper mode of baptism? Where did 
Cain get his wife? What kind of punishment do the 
wicked suffer in the life to come? Are you a funda¬ 
mentalist or a progressive, a traditionalist or a 
higher critic? Such hackneyed and unimportant 
questions have many times sidetracked the workers 
and led them off up a blind alley to get no results. 
This woman tried that on Jesus. “We Samaritans 
worship in this mountain. You Jews say that in 
Jerusalem is the proper place to worship. What 
do you say about it? Let's argue that question here 
and now.” Jesus showed her that neither was right, 
that the place had nothing to do with genuine 
worship. He taught her that God is a Spirit and that 
spiritual worship is what he desires rather than forms 
in times or places. She at once leaped to the thought 
of the coming Messiah. She said in substance that 
when Christ came he would teach us all things. Then 
came the thrilling and startling statement, “I that 


Jesus the Evangelist 


69 


speak to thee am he.” The woman, having found 
the Messiah, went down into the city and told the 
story. “Come see a man that told me all things 
that ever I did.” So soon as she committed her sinful 
soul to him, she received the divine healing and 
cleansing and forthwith went out to tell it to others. 

Jesus began by asking a favor of a disreputable 
woman and left her a soul-winner. Here we might 
linger, study, and restudy this case. Modem 
psychologists and up-to-date pedagogues have noth¬ 
ing to add to this. Modem pedagogy and psychology 
find him not only up to date, but beyond present- 
day accomplishments in these lines. Wonderful 
personal worker! Marvelous evangelist! 

Jesus the Evangelist and Nicodemus .—What can 
be said of Nicodemus? He was well born, well reared, 
well educated, strictly moral, good and useful citi¬ 
zen, in high official position, without a stain upon his 
character or a cloud upon his reputation. He was a 
son of Abraham, a strict member of the Church, 
and one of the most highly honored citizens in the 
city—a man above reproach and very highly 
esteemed by his fellow citizens. Since we have no 
position in our Church and State corresponding to 
membership in the Sanhedrin, we shall think of this 
man as equal in position and dignity to a member 
of the Supreme Court of the United States, or a 
member of the President's Cabinet. If Church and 
State were combined and we could have a member of 
the President's Cabinet and a bishop in one and the 
same person, we should have one of about such rank 
as Nicodemus. 

A great and distinguished person seeks an inter- 


70 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

view with Jesus. How does Jesus deal with him? 
Why did he seek the interview? Here we see the 
Master dealing with one of the great dignitaries of 
the land. Why did this good man need help from 
Jesus? He was moral. He was religious. He 
attended the public worship. He kept the Sabbath. 
He tithed his income. He was a conscientious 
observer of all the demands of the Church. What 
did he lack? 

His approach to Jesus was courteous. We do 
not know why by night. It might have been the 
only time the two men living strenuous lives could 
get together. Nicodemus might have feared to be 
seen with this new teacher in daylight. He might 
have thought that he could be of some help to this 
interesting young man and sought to have the 
interview without any one knowing it. Nicodemus 
was city-bred, and Jesus was a peasant, come to the 
city to launch a movement. Kindly disposed Nico¬ 
demus might have desired to help this attractive 
young man from the country get started in the big 
city. (Often kindly disposed city folk are willing 
to help rustic people adjust themselves to the city.) 
It may have been real soul hunger. Whatever may 
have been the motive, he came and made a most 
respectful approach. “Rabbi, we know that thou 
art a teacher come from God: for no man can do 
these miracles that thou doest, except God be with 
him.” Jesus was never coarse, brusque, nor unduly 
abrupt. He was always a gentleman. He came 
nearer being abrupt here than anywhere else on 
record. He gave this dignitary a shock and a jolt 
that no doubt amazed Nicodemus. Jesus answered, 


Jesus the Evangelist 


71 


“ Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be 
born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 
A thunderbolt out of a clear sky would not have 
been more surprising than this. If any one was sure 
of the kingdom of God, it was his class. If any one 
had a passport into the skies, it was these most 
devout and cultured Jews. If ever a man was ready 
for heaven without Jesus, it was this man. Jesus 
did not break the truth to him mildly and gently. 
He exploded a bomb. If the slang expression, “He 
knocked him off the Christmas tree,” was ever ad¬ 
missible, it would apply here. Without preparing 
him for it, he showed him in one alarming deliverance 
that there was no chance for him to see the kingdom 
of heaven. Not because he was immoral, not because 
he had wronged any one, but because he was depend¬ 
ing upon observance of the law for salvation. He 
expected to be saved because he was doing right. 
He was predicating his hope of salvation, as Paul 
first predicated his, upon strict obedience to the law; 
was predicating his hope of salvation where Wesley 
once placed his. At one fell stroke Jesus swept 
away all his spurious hopes. Jesus taught him the 
necessity of regeneration. 

In dealing with men in high position in this day 
we may be too plausible. A high-toned gentleman, 
by our making so much over his goodness and high 
standing, may be made to feel that somehow God 
is under obligations to save him. Jesus did not 
encourage that method in this case. He was as 
tender and gentle as a woman with the abandoned 
character at the well and with the thief on the cross, 
but this self-righteous man, this man whom the 


72 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

people flattered and fawned over, got a jolt that 
knocked all the props from under him. Did you 
ever know a fine gentleman in the community that 
had been petted and made over who still remained 
out of the Church? It might be well for some dis¬ 
creet man who loves him as Jesus loved Nicodemus 
to “knock him off the Christmas tree” as Jesus did 
Nicodemus. If gentleness has been overworked until 
the subject is impervious, try Jesus’s method. It 
will sometimes hit the spot. It will sometimes jar 
him loose from his anchorage to self-righteous ram¬ 
parts. The surprised, amazed, confused gentleman 
then sometimes turns to the Lord. 

The Conversion of Nathanael .—Another conver¬ 
sion different from all the others was that of Nathan¬ 
ael. Nathanael was a rustic, a villager, an unso¬ 
phisticated countryman. He was a mystic. He was 
much given to prayer, meditation, introspection, and 
communion with God; had times and places where 
he met with his Lord. At these trysting places he drew 
very near to God. He was a student of prophecy, 
of the Bible. He had his prejudices. He wondered 
if anything good could come out of Nazareth. He 
was prejudiced in favor of some rival village, per¬ 
haps. It is perfectly human if he was. Yet he was 
sufficiently open-minded to “come and see.” Philip 
was too good a personal worker to argue the question 
with him. Very wisely he said, “Come and see.” 
He came and soon saw in Jesus what he had been 
reading of in the prophets. Nathanael’s conversion 
was the easiest one of which we have a record. His 
heart was already prepared. Since he was so good, 
so devout, so prayerful, so obedient, what lacked 


Jesus the Evangelist 


73 


he yet? He lacked exactly what a devout Jew, a 
devout Mohammedan, a devout Unitarian of to-day 
lacks. A belief in God does not bring salvation. 
God has manifested himself as Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit. I am not saying that one must be able to 
state clearly a Trinitarian creed before he can be 
converted. I am saying that Jesus said, “No man 
cometh unto the Father but by me” There is no 
other name given under heaven among men whereby 
we can be saved. Nathanael needed to know Christ. 
The devout Jew of to-day needs to know Christ. 
The fact that he prays, that he gives, that he keeps 
the rules of his Church is no guarantee of salvation. 
He needs Christ . He needs to know him whom to 
know aright is life eternal. The Mohammedan may 
be devout and sincere, but he needs to know Christ. 
The devout Unitarian needs to know Christ. The 
fact that he is devout, that he prays, that he keeps 
the rules of his Church is no valid hypothesis for 
salvation. Does he know Christ as his personal 
Saviour? This devout Jew did not. As soon as 
Christ was revealed to him he accepted Christ. 
Likely he was afterwards known as Bartholomew. 
Jesus seemed to express surprise that he was so 
easily and so quickly converted. Jesus said unto 
him: “Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under 
the fig tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater 
things than these.” That is to say, I have much 
stronger evidence than has yet been produced and 
I am somewhat surprised that you believe so readily. 
All Jesus did in this case was to unfold himself 
just enough for this devout soul to see him of whom 
he had been reading in the prophets. When you 


74 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

show the anxious, receptive soul Jesus, that is 
sufficient. 

It would be interesting to study Jesus's dealing 
with the rich young ruler. Likewise there are other 
lessons in his dealings with the thief on the cross. 
Space forbids going into these and other cases that 
could be studied with profit. 

Let us see if we can gather some lessons from the 
evangelism of Jesus. There is no uniformity in 
New Testament conversions. There is no typical 
manifestation of saving faith. They register it in 
many ways. He who thinks that all conversions 
must have the same physical manifestations needs 
to study the evangelism of Jesus. Jesus always took 
into consideration the background of the individual. 
His training, his prejudices, his moral status were 
all considered and the approach suited to the needs 
of the one with that background and training. 
He was a master psychologist. He first got the 
“point of contact" and then skillfully led the person 
up to an acceptance of him as his personal Saviour. 
The beginning often seems remote from the goal, 
but as the-case develops you can see him bringing 
the person around in this direction. Finally the 
matter is brought face to face with him and he ac¬ 
cepts Jesus as his personal Saviour. Jesus was the 
most skillful evangelist that ever walked on this 
earth. His methods are worthy of our most careful 
study. Insomuch as in us lies we should learn his 
methods and follow them. Then shall we become 
evangelists of whom he will say in the end, “Well 
done, good and faithful servants; enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord." 


CHAPTER VII 
PERSONAL EVANGELISM 

Henry Clay Trumbull, near the close of his 
useful life, was asked which phase of his varied 
work as a Christian was most comforting. He 
thought of the many sermons he had preached all 
over the English-speaking world, of the more than 
thirty books he had written, of the numberless copies 
of papers he had published, and then of the innumer¬ 
able personal interviews he had had with individuals, 
and said: “The most comforting part of my work 
as I look back on my life is the work I have done with 
one individual at a time.” Those who are familiar 
with the life of this great man will remember that 
he was always on the alert to do personal work. 
Many men were led to Christ on the trains, in depots, 
in hotels, on omnibuses. He prized this above all 
the other good work he did for God and humanity 
during all his eminent and useful career. Bishop 
Walter Lambuth was like-minded. All through his 
strenuous life he was leading persons one by one to 
Christ. Many cab drivers in America and in Eng¬ 
land were pleaded with personally from the depot 
to the hotel by this man of God to give themselves 
to Christ. At great missionary conventions, while 
others were enjoying a little social respite between 
sessions, he was often out in some little cottage or 
by the bedside of some sick one presenting Jesus as 
the only hope. Mr. Moody, with all his great 
powers, was perhaps greatest in dealing with one 


76 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 


soul at a time. If H. Clay Trumbull, Bishop 
Lambuth, Mr. Moody, and men of their grade 
regarded personal work as their greatest opportunity, 
what shall we say of smaller men who get so absorbed 
in making and delivering “big sermons" that they 
do not have time before the sermon to deal with 
individuals and after the “big sermon" they are too 
much exhausted to deal with any one? The pastor 
who does not appreciate the value of personal 
interviews with lost men and women needs to revise 
his views, needs to know how to divide his time and 
energy, needs to learn how to keep matters in the 
right proportion. 

There are many reasons why every pastor and 
every member of the Church should be a personal 
worker. Some of these reasons are given in this 
chapter: 

1. Every Christian should be a personal worker 
to be like Christ. He went about doing good. Some 
of' his greatest deliverances were made to one 
individual. That greatest verse, “ God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that who¬ 
soever believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life," was delivered to one person. He 
did not hesitate to work with the most abandoned 
woman that crossed his path. Whatever Jesus did 
as a popular preacher, and I think he did more along 
that line than the record indicates, he never so ex¬ 
hausted himself in great sermons that he could not 
give time to one soul, great or small, that needed his 
personal attention. He had no mania for great con¬ 
gregations. He had zeal for souls, whether alone 
or in mass. From the inception of his public ministry 


Personal Evangelism 77 

until he spoke his dying words to the thief on the 
cross, he was a personal worker. If we have in us the 
mind that was in him, we too will utilize opportuni¬ 
ties, day by day, in helping others to Christ. 

2. It is the natural impulse of a soul made right 
with God to want to bring others to Christ. “We 
know that we have passed from death unto life, be¬ 
cause we love the brethren.” Does not every one 
of us remember the newborn desire that came into 
our hearts, when first we felt his pardoning power, to 
help some one to get the same blessing we had? 
It was in my soul. I wanted to help the other boys. 
I wanted them to have what I had, but I suppressed 
that holy desire. It was not the fashion in that 
Church for young people to do personal work. Only 
a few of the old men and women ever did that, and 
they only in the white heat of a fervent revival. Had 
I been born spiritually in a Church where it was the 
habit for all converted people to be active in winning 
others, I would have moved out into that kind of 
work easily and naturally. So would most other 
converts. Our trouble is that the young convert 
sees no proper models. No one else is doing what he 
wants to do, and he suppresses that incipient desire 
to lead others to Christ that always comes to the 
newborn soul. What a tremendous responsibility 
rests upon a Church, not only to get people saved, but 
to give them the right conception of Christian living 
by having models before them as they begin their 
Christian life! Millions of young converts have been 
marred in the beginning of their Christian lives by 
the imperfect and improper models they see in the 
Church around them. An inactive Church is no 


78 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

proper place for spiritual children to be born. If 
every young convert could see personal work going 
on as the normal program of the Church in which 
he was born, we should have hundreds of thousands 
more personal workers than we now have. Can we 
adequately impress the Church with its responsibility 
to be a proper mother to the young converts? Whose 
duty is it to do this? 

3. The Church as a whole must be engaged in per¬ 
sonal work to be like the primitive Church. We 
never cease wondering at the mighty, irresistible power 
of the primitive Church. It is one of the marvels of 
history. Read again the first chapter of John, 
wherein God gives us a cross section of early Church 
history, and we discover the reason. John the Baptist 
led John the writer of the Gospel of John and Andrew 
to Christ. Andrew went out and brought Peter. 
(John the modest writer perhaps went out and found 
his brother James.) Jesus went out and found 
Philip. Philip went out and brought Nathanael. 
Thus each one who was brought to Christ went out 
and brought another one. A Church whose policy 
is like that can soon conquer the world. That is why 
the early Church spread with such incredible 
rapidity. The New Testament Church had but little 
of what we ordinarily rely upon to make advance¬ 
ment. It had no legal standing for two hundred 
years, hence no legal protection. It had no wealth 
and no social prestige. Its members were made up 
largely of people who had no social standing, no 
wealth, no political pull, no human sources of 
power. But Christianity spread into all the coun¬ 
tries and in the fourth century conquered the Roman 


Personal Evangelism 


79 


Empire. Individual work with individuals was one 
secret of its power. We have lost that, because when 
the unholy alliance was made with the state the keys 
to the kingdom were committed to the priests. In 
the Reformation we broke with the Romish hier¬ 
archy, but we did not return wholly to the primitive 
Church customs. The preacher in the Protestant 
Churches still has an undue proportion of the 
responsibility, or the laymen do not carry adequate 
responsibility. We took the keys away from the 
priest, but we did not enlist, train, and put to work 
the vast unused asset, the laity. Thousands of our 
members have no sense of responsibility concerning 
winning others to Christ. They think that is the 
preacher's business. In present-day evangelism we 
want the laity to be taught to win souls for Christ. 
It is the pastor's responsibility to see to it that this 
is taught so emphatically and so persistently that all 
members shall understand that it is their duty to 
do personal work throughout the year. 

4. We must do it for self-preservation. Can a 
man maintain a vital religious experience who is not 
trying to save souls, who bears no fruit? We are 
saved to serve. We are the salt of the earth. The 
effectiveness of the plan of our Lord to save the world 
depends upon the fidelity of his followers. If we 
fail him, the plan fails. If we are fruitless, we die. 
We are cut off. Jesus says something startling about 
this: “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he 
taketh away." The inactive man backslides. In¬ 
activity is the genesis of backsliding. The most 
prolific source of apostasy is fruitlessness. The 
threat that they shall be cut off, bound into bundles. 


80t Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

and burned ought to be a most disturbing statement 
to all inactive Church members. 

“Heaven’s gate is shut to him who comes alone; 

Save a soul, and it shall save thine own.” 

5. We cannot carry out our Lord's orders without 
doing personal work. He commanded us to carry 
this message to every creature. Public preaching will 
never do this. Not half of the people in any country 
can be gotten to the public services. Where is the 
city or community where you can preach to one-half 
of the people in a Church? Not half attend. The 
larger part then will have to be reached personally, 
if ever reached. Jesus did not say, “Go, preach 
this to every one who will attend a public service." 
The public service is only one way of reaching them. 
The major part of them will have to be reached by 
individual efforts. 

6. We must do it, for it is the greatest work that 
one person can do for another. There are innumer¬ 
able ways by which persons may help other persons. 
The hungry can be fed, the naked clothed, the sick 
ministered to, the ignorant educated, the sorrowing 
ones comforted; but the largest and best service 
one human being ever rendered to another is bringing 
him to Jesus. Social service is good, better, provided 
it ultimates in bringing lost souls to Christ. The 
temporary good done in providing for the physical 
needs often opens an avenue to the heart, and lasting 
good is done. Educating young people is good, es¬ 
pecially if they turn out to be educated Christians. 
If the favored ones do not turn out to be Christians, 
the good is at best but short-lived, whereas leading 
one to Christ does good for all time, throughout all 


Personal Evangelism 


81 


eternity. “He which converteth a sinner from the 
error of his way shall save a soul from death, and 
shall hide a multitude of sins.” 

7. It brings the greatest joy to the human heart. 
Many Church members do not “enjoy religion.” 
Inactive Church members rarely, perhaps never, 
enjoy religion. But he who is active, who leads 
souls to Christ, has his cup full and running over. 
Every pastor has had members who wanted to be 
made happy. Many have come to him with their 
statement that they wanted to be made happy, but 
somehow they could not be as happy as some others 
seemed to be. Every efficient pastor knows the rem¬ 
edy. He puts them to work. He never says, “Pray 
more.” They may need to pray more, but not to be 
made happy. To desire religious ecstasy that one 
may luxuriate in it is selfishness. Why should a man 
want to be having a religious jollification in a heart¬ 
broken world like this? Seeking happiness for happi¬ 
ness' sake in religious experience is chasing a will- 
o'-the-wisp. Only active, soul-winning Christians 
are happy. All soul-winners are happy. What is 
the lesson learned from this? 

8. One of the greatest joys in heaven will be meet¬ 
ing those whom we helped to Christ in this life. The 
richest joy this side the pearly gates is the joy of 
having helped one to Christ. The richest joy, likely, 
within the pearly gates will be meeting those whom 
we brought to Christ here and have them remind 
us of that time and place. If through some mighty 
stretch of mercy one should get into heaven who 
never led a soul to Christ, would he be happy? 

6 


82 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

“ Methinks I should mourn o’er my sorrowful fate, 

If sorrow in heaven can be, 

If no one should be at the beautiful gate, 

Conducted to glory by me.” 

If the dream of the poet should be literally true 
and there should be a star in the crown of every 
redeemed soul for each soul he had won while here 
below, how would one feel with a starless crown? 

“Will there be any stars, any stars in my crown, 

When at ev’ning the sun goeth down? 

When I wake with the blest, in the mansion of rest, 

Will there be any stars in my crown?” 

Joy unspeakable and full of glory will fill and thrill 
our souls from time to time in our heavenly home 
as we meet those whom we helped here and they 
thank us for it. 

9. We should do it to increase the efficiency of the 
Church. If an efficiency expert in matters religious 
should visit our Churches and grade them, what 
grade would the average Church get? Suppose one 
standard should be that each member lead one 
person per year to Christ and into the Church? 
That is not an unreasonable demand. The demands 
for efficiency in schools, in business, and in other 
realms where efficiency experts check up and grade 
institutions and corporations are that high or higher. 
The ideal of efficiency would be for each Church to 
double its membership annually. If each member 
wins one, and the pastor is efficient enough to add 
to the roll by his efforts, public and personal, as 
many as go out by letter and death, each Church 
would double its membership annually. The Church 
which starts with five hundred would end the year 


Personal Evangelism 


83 


with one thousand. If they added only two hundred 
and fifty, they would be fifty per cent efficient. 
If they added one hundred and twenty-five, they 
would be twenty-five per cent efficient. It looks 
altogether reasonable that a member during a whole 
year ought to be able to win one for Christ and his 
Church. That would mean more than two million 
added to our Church this year on profession of faith. 
We are grading shamefully below this. Why? 
Because we have hundreds of thousands of members 
who never win one. Our great success in Korea 
grows largely out of the habit of personal work taught 
the young converts by our people there. If a raw 
untrained heathen converted in Korea can lead one 
to Christ, and does so, what shall we say of our 
seasoned members who have not led a soul to Christ 
in many years? 

No pastor should be satisfied with a Church whose 
members are not soul-winning members. He may 
not be able to get his Church to respond to this 
ideal at once, but it is worth years of patient toil 
to get a Church worked up to this New Testament 
standard of soul-winning. If he gets ten per cent 
the first year and ten the next and thus on for ten 
years (and it takes ten years or more to do worth¬ 
while constructive work), he will have done a monu¬ 
mental work if at the end of a decade he has a 
Church one hundred per cent efficient in soul-winning. 
Keep this ideal steadily before you year in and year 
out, and your Church can be made to approximate 
this standard perpetually. 

It has been said that he who puts ten men to work 
is doing better than he who can do the work of ten 


84 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

men. Perfection would be to put ten men to work 
and then himself do the work also of ten. How 
many members in your Church are soul-winning 
members? How many can you add to that this 
year? 


CHAPTER VIII 

AFTER THE REVIVAL, WHAT? 

While the teacher is discussing the preparation 
for the revival, that feature looms large in his think¬ 
ing. Now that I am to discuss the follow-up, I 
do not abate one iota of the importance of adequate 
preparation. If I were discussing the work during 
the actual ongoing of the revival, I should put great 
emphasis on doing everything possible in the very 
best way to get the largest and best results during 
the revival. It is hardly possible to overemphasize 
that. But now we come to the conserving of results. 
If the best possible preparation were made, if all 
possible skill were used in the management of the 
revival, if large recruits were brought into the 
Church and then left uncared-for, undeveloped, and 
allowed to backslide, what were the good of the 
thorough preparation and efficient execution of well- 
made plans? It would all come to naught. Many 
seemingly great revivals have left no abiding results. 
Oftentimes evangelists have been blamed because it 
is said that within twelve months you can see no 
permanent effects of the revival. Who is to blame? 
Can a revival be so conducted that the results will 
abide regardless of the cultivation or absence of 
cultivation of the young converts? I do not hesi¬ 
tate to say that no such revival was ever held. The 
Lord Jesus himself (I write reverently) could not 
conduct that kind of revival. Spiritual babes are 
like physical babes; they must be nursed, fed, exer- 


86 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

cised, and brought up. Mothers who would abandon 
their newborn babes and leave them to provide 
for themselves would be regarded as heartless, un- 
motherly, and inhuman. What shall we say of pas¬ 
tors and Churches which give so little attention to 
nurturing and nourishing young converts? I once 
knew a pastor who received a class of one hundred 
and forty-seven on Easter morning, and that very 
night left for another State to hold a two weeks' 
revival meeting. Did he have any conception of a 
pastor's responsibility for the newborn babes? He 
was void of spiritual, paternal instincts, and left his 
Church untaught as to its maternal responsibility 
for the babes in Christ. 

It is difficult to express the relative importance 
of spiritual factors in mathematical terms. Spiritual 
factors are incommensurable. Were I called on to 
express revival factors in mathematical terms, I 
would say that preparation is one-third, holding the 
meeting one-third, and conserving results one-third. 
Inadequate preparation and inefficient management 
of a meeting may be made up in part by a most care¬ 
ful conserving of all the results of the meeting. Hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of converts have been allowed to 
backslide that might have been developed into use¬ 
ful members. If I may express an opinion of my 
brethren in the pastorate, I would say that compara¬ 
tively few know how best to prepare, many are fairly 
effective in conducting the meeting itself, but fewest 
of all know how to follow up the revival. Out of 
one hundred pastors you might find seventy-five 
who are fairly good in conducting the revival; per¬ 
haps twenty-five who know how to make proper 


After the Revival , What? 


87 


preparation; not likely more than ten who are 
efficient in conserving results. This is a pity. This 
is greatly to be regretted. 

The great falling away after the revival is not due 
to the methods of the evangelist. His work may be 
superficial. He may not lay a good foundation in 
the fundamental verities of the gospel. But even if 
he does, and many of them do, he cannot so grip 
the young converts that they will be immune from 
the common temptations of young Christians. The 
father and mother may be ever so careful about all 
the prenatal influences, so that a child is brought into 
this world with all possible favorable conditions, yet 
this does not prevent the newborn babe from needing 
care and food. The science of eugenics can never 
be made to substitute for food and care in the post¬ 
natal period. The evangelist then is not to be blamed 
for the falling away after the revival closes. The 
blame is with the pastor and the Church. 

What then are some of the things a pastor ought 
to do after the meeting closes? 

1. Endeavor to get every one who professes faith 
to unite with a Church. Methodists have never 
insisted that every one professing faith in Christ in 
a Methodist revival join the Methodist Church. 
We have never been so narrow as that. But we do 
insist and ought to insist that every one professing 
faith in Christ unite with the Church of his choice. 
This we ought to emphasize with all the emphasis 
possible. Very few of those who do not unite with 
the Church hold out. You will often be told that 
the Church does not save and that they can live a 
Christian life and get home to heaven without joining 


88 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

the Church. That is perhaps true. Billy Sunday's 
illustration is pertinent: “You might swim from 
New York to Liverpool, but you would show better 
judgment by taking a ship." Commit every one to 
Christ and then to some Church. 

2. Those who join your Church should be indoc¬ 
trinated. You can do this either before they join 
or after. The wise pastor will not take into the 
Church a polyglot of all ages in the same class. The 
children will be put in a class to themselves as candi¬ 
dates for Church membership. They should be met 
with from time to time and instructed in what is 
involved in Church membership, what is expected 
of people who join, Church vows explained, and when 
duly indoctrinated bring this class before the whole 
Church and receive them into full fellowship. Where 
there is a Junior Church with a wise junior pastor, 
this period of preparation need not be long. But if 
there is no Junior Church, no special junior services 
provided besides the Sunday school, the pastor should 
do a careful, painstaking piece of work with these 
children before giving them the vows. 

The young people will be treated differently. So 
soon as they are taken into the Church they should 
be inducted into the League work. If not already 
in the Sunday school, by all means they should be 
enrolled in the Sunday school. Every possible 
effort should be made to assimilate them as thor¬ 
oughly as possible and as quickly as possible. The 
first two weeks mean much as they form their con¬ 
ception of the Church. If the Church in the League 
or otherwise has a recreation program, by all means 
enlist them in this. Impress them that Church 


After the Revival , What? 


89 


people have the best time in the world. Teach them 
(and live up to it) that we do not have to go outside 
the Church for our pastimes and pleasures. With 
an efficient League, well-organized Sunday school 
classes, and an atmosphere sympathetic toward 
young life, young people can be wedded to the 
Church. But if they are taken in carelessly, no 
attention paid to them, no provision made for their 
pastimes and pleasures, worldliness denounced and 
no substitute offered, you will get but few young 
people into the Church, and fewer still will be made 
a real part of the Church. Why not go seriously 
into the matter of providing the kind of amusements 
that young lives need under religious auspices? 
Let the young people know that the preacher and 
the Church are friends of the young people. They 
ought to know that the Church is their best friend. 
It has done more for them than all other orders, 
societies, lodges, or clubs. Demonstrate that this is 
true. ' 

The adults that are taken in during the revival 
ought to be taken in impressively. Deliver us from 
a slovenly or hurried or perfunctory reception of 
members. People are joining the greatest institution 
in the world. I am not a lodge man, club man, or 
fraternity man, and hence do not know the cere¬ 
monies by which people are received into these other 
organizations. Let us suppose that the initiatory 
ceremony into a lodge is serious, spectacular, im¬ 
pressive, dramatic. (It is no violent assumption to 
assume this much.) The middle-aged man who 
has been initiated into these lodges comes to the 
altar of the Church to be admitted into an organiza- 


90 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 


tion whose value to him and to society is a million 
times more than that of any lodge on earth. He has 
had the impressive, never-to-be-forgotten initiatory 
ceremonies of the lodges administered by men who 
did it with dignity and force, but the preacher hum¬ 
drums the vows in a perfunctory, mechanical manner, 
without dignity or force. What is the inevitable 
impression? Beware of hurried or perfunctory or 
slovenly methods of receiving members. 

3. New members ought to be taught their financial 
obligations. Many preachers fear to stress finances 
too much at first. They wait till the new members 
are more at home. I even heard of one pastor who 
announced that new members would not be expected 
to contribute anything for the first year. He had no 
more right to absolve them from their financial 
obligations than from their duty to pray. It would 
be quite as appropriate to announce that new 
members would not be expected to pray the first 
year. The collecting steward on whose list the new 
member is to be placed should be brought forward 
and introduced to the member joining. If any 
explanation as to the details of the local Church's 
financial plans is needed, this steward can make it, 
and there and then secure the new member's sub¬ 
scription for the remaining part of the year. 

4. Church attendance ought to be deeply im¬ 
pressed upon the minds of the new members. It is 
not optional with a Methodist whether he attends 
the regular services of the Church. It is obligatory. 
He promises to attend upon the ordinances and sup¬ 
port the institutions of the Church. Impress him 
that he is expected at the Sunday morning, Sunday 


After the Revival , What? 


91 


evening, and Wednesday evening services. Volun¬ 
tary absence from these regular stated services is 
breaking his Church vows. Every service ought to 
have something in it worth while. It ought to be 
different from every other service. It ought to be 
said truthfully that any member missing any service 
will miss something he can never get at another 
service. Announce this and live up to it. Perhaps 
only a small percentage of the older members are 
present at all three of these services weekly. So 
much the worse. Grow up a better membership. 
Some never come. Some come rarely. Some come 
once per week, some twice, some thrice. Those 
who come thrice are the salt of the earth. Would 
that these elect and select souls might be multiplied 
in the Church! They may be, by impressing the 
new members that they are expected to be at each 
of these services unless providentially hindered. 
The lax views that the average Church member 
has about attending public worship is appalling. 
Whether he likes the preacher, the singing, or the 
people who attend has nothing to do with his obli¬ 
gations. He owes this to God. His soul needs it 
too. 

5. Find something for every new member to do. 
It is said that Spurgeon always asked the new mem¬ 
ber what kind of work he was joining the Church 
to do. He assumed that each member was coming 
into the Church to help in some particular way. 
Joining the Church ought to be regarded as a high 
privilege. Every one joining ought to be assigned 
something. With the seven committees that are 
supposed to be active in every Church now, a place 


92 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

can be found for many more than in former years. 
Then there are numberless things not committed 
to committees that the pastor can discreetly ask 
the new member to do. Starting the new member off 
right is half the battle. If you can get him to work 
at once, you have won out. Everything to be done 
for the Church is important. “ Nothing useless is 
or low.” The humble service rendered for God 
actuated by love is a sublime religious ceremony. 
“A cup of cold water given in the name of the Lord 
Jesus shall not be without its reward.” The pastor 
must be resourceful in finding things for folk to do. 
I once called on a small groceryman to go daily on 
certain streets and distribute cards announcing the 
revival meeting. He did it with great fidelity. At 
the end of the meeting he came to me and said: 
“ I don't know whether I did any good or not, but I 
do appreciate your calling on me to do this work. 
I have been a member here seven years, and this is 
the first time I was ever asked to do anything in this 
Church.” Sit up at night to think out things for 
your people to do. Distribute the work. Don't 
depend upon a faithful few. Never let new mem¬ 
bers go one whole month after joining without 
being called on to do something. There are a 
thousand things they can be called on to do besides 
praying in public. That is only one of a thousand 
ways in which a man may render service in the 
Church. Put everybody to work, especially the new 
members. Start them right. 

6. Keep the revival fires burning throughout the 
year. Do not allow the Church to feel that so soon 
as the protracted meetings end the time for being 


After the Revival What? 


93 


saved is past. Never preach as the closing sermon, 
“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and ye 
are yet in your sins.” Unconverted people with a 
sense of humor could but laugh at a Church that 
gets desperately wrought up about them during the 
meeting, feels alarmed lest they might in a moment 
drop into an eternal hell, gets into a frenzy about 
them because they will not repent, and then, when the 
meeting closes, seems to lose interest in them and 
ceases to worry about their damnation until the next 
annual revival campaign. Well do they know that, 
if they are “hanging hair-hung and breath-shaken 
over the eternal burnings” during the meetings 
they are in a like danger when the meetings close. 
Let us not put ourselves and our Churches in that 
ridiculous light with the unsaved. They are in as 
much danger of hell after the meeting as they were 
during the meeting. If our interest is genuine, it 
must not be intermittent, must not be spasmodic. 
It must be persistent, must be perennial. Both 
preacher and people need to keep this in mind. 
Every service must be more or less evangelistic, 
especially the Sunday evening service. It ought to 
be pronouncedly evangelistic. The Evangelistic 
Committee has a fine field for work fifty-two weeks 
in the year. The prospects ought to be kept in 
mind all the time. Special work ought to be done 
by the committee and preacher to reach these from 
time to time throughout the whole year. The pastor 
ought to make his weekly pastoral work look toward 
reaching some one for the Sunday evening service. 
In my first year in the ministry there was only one 
great city Church that I knew of that had conver- 


94 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

sions in its regular service. That was Centenary 
Church, St. Louis, Rev. Dr. John Mathews, pastor. 
He reported conversions every Sunday night during 
the year. I thought then and I think now that every 
Church ought to strive for that. In every station 
this ought to be the ideal. On circuits the evangelis¬ 
tic fires in some way ought to be kept burning 
during the whole year—revival services fifty-two 
weeks in the year, special revival services for two 
weeks in the year. This is a revival Church. Is 
yours? 

The pastor then will show his greatest skill in 
conservation. All other efforts come to naught 
unless he conserves. Better get five into the Church 
and hold them, develop them, make useful members 
of them, than to get five hundred and let them back¬ 
slide. Create an atmosphere in your Church con¬ 
ducive to life and growth. Put all your powers and 
all the powers you can command to fostering, assimi¬ 
lating, and developing the new members. Such a 
policy will pay. Then we shall not have so many 
idle members and so many backslidden members. 
Whatever it may cost, pay the price for efficient 
conservation. 


CHAPTER IX 


PASTORAL AND VOCATIONAL 
EVANGELISM 

Who should hold the meeting, the pastor or the 
evangelist? A frank discussion of this subject is in 
order. The authorized evangelists could not hold 
all the meetings, were that advisable. We have about 
fifty authorized general evangelists and less than 
fifty Conference and district evangelists. Supposing 
there were, all told, one hundred of these authorized 
evangelists—general, Conference, and district (but 
there are not that many)—and suppose that each 
could hold fifteen meetings annually, that would 
be fifteen hundred per year. To hold a meeting in 
every Church and preaching place in our Church 
each year would require about twenty thousand 
meetings. If no one held meetings but the author¬ 
ized evangelists, it would require more than thirteen 
years to get around. It is not now and never will be 
possible for the authorized evangelists to hold one- 
tenth of the meetings that must be held annually; 
hence the pastor must hold the major part of the 
meetings. 

There was a time when it was thought that only 
men of certain temperament—to be more specific, 
that only emotional pastors—could hold a revival. 
That was when we were laboring under the delusion 
that the hortatory appeal from the pulpit was about 
the only way to get men to come to Christ. We 
now know that any pastor who will make the survey, 

(95) 


96 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

set up the committees according to the Discipline 
and this book, and put his own members to work 
in an intelligent way can hold a successful revival. 
I helped a brother in a meeting who had long since 
assumed that he could not hold a revival because he 
was not emotional and could not make a stirring 
appeal to the unsaved. He saw the committees 
set up and trained for work, saw them do it effect¬ 
ively, and when I was about ready to leave him he 
said: “I have discovered that I can hold a meeting. 
This meeting has been a success, and there has been 
no emotional appeal made any more than I can make. 
In the future I shall try to hold my own meetings.” 
In the course of a year or two he made the survey, 
organized his committees, and held his own meeting, 
which turned out to be in all respects a better meeting 
than the one I had held for him. Many pastors do 
themselves an injustice by assuming that they cannot 
hold a revival meeting because, forsooth, they are 
not emotional. The public emotional appeal is 
one of the many ways of reaching the unsaved, but 
it is not the only one. Judging by the records, we 
can infer that the Master used it but little. Whether 
he did or did not need not be debated here. Of this 
much we are sure: it was not his exclusive method. 

Every pastor ought to hold a successful revival 
meeting in his own charge. I think the station 
preacher ought always to hold the first meeting 
in his charge himself; the circuit preacher like¬ 
wise, unless he finds it too much for him. If he 
holds some in the winter, some in the spring, 
and some in the summer, he can make the round 
without outside help. A pastor needs to go through 


Pastoral and Vocational Evangelism 97 

the agony of a revival campaign with his people 
alone. There will be created that comradeship that 
arises among soldiers who fight together on bloody 
battle fields. Our people must be taught to be loyal 
to the pastor in his revival efforts. Of the twenty 
thousand revival meetings held annually, pastors 
must hold about eighteen thousand five hundred of 
them. After a pastor has held one, two, or three 
revival meetings in a place, it is wise to call in out¬ 
side help. Sometimes a fellow pastor can be secured. 
This often works well, but he is so liable to be called 
off to bury some one in his charge or to do something 
else that no one else but a pastor can do that there 
is always an element of uncertainty in a fellow 
pastor's being able to hold the meeting. Moreover, 
the methods of the fellow pastor may be much like 
those of the regular pastor and hence will not sup¬ 
plement him, will not do the kind of work which the 
regular pastor cannot do. 

When a pastor “has burned over his territory,” 
has done all that he can do with his organized forces, 
then he needs to be supplemented by a specialist. 
Manifestly the Bible teaches that God planned that 
some men should be pastors and some evangelists. 
“And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; 
and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and 
teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work 
of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of 
Christ.” (Eph. iv. 11, 12.) For a long time our 
Church did not make our law conform to the Bible 
conception of the ministry. We made no legal 
place in our itinerary for the vocational evangelists. 
Now we have just such provision as the Bible seems 
7 


98 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines' 

to contemplate. A man can now be a vocational 
evangelist, be a full-fledged member of the Con¬ 
ference, and be under rule as truly as is a pastor. 
“The General and Conference Committees shall be 
authorized to indorse, recommend, and employ 
evangelists and direct their labors, whether they are 
itinerant or local preachers, in accordance with the 
policies of their respective Boards and in harmony 
with the presiding elder and preachers in charge in 
the fields in which the evangelists are to labor. All 
preachers, local or itinerant, who engage in evangel¬ 
istic work as a calling shall be required to secure 
annually the approval of the General Committee on 
Evangelism or of the Committee on Evangelism of 
the Conference within whose territory they reside. 
Upon recommendation of the General Committee 
the bishop in charge may appoint members of an 
Annual Conference as general evangelists; and upon 
recommendation of the General Committee on Evan¬ 
gelism and the request of the Conference Board he 
may appoint members of an Annual Conference to 
the office of Conference evangelist. Local preachers 
who are not appointed by the General Committee 
as general evangelists, nor by a General Committee 
as Conference evangelists, may be listed as approved 
evangelists after being indorsed by a Committee on 
Evangelism. Conference evangelists are men ap¬ 
pointed principally for evangelistic services within 
their Conference territory, and shall be required to 
labor some defined part of each year in the pastoral 
charges of their Conferences; and they may not 
accept invitations to assist in revivals outside their 
Conference territory unless the privilege is granted 


Pastoral and Vocational Evangelism 99 

by their Conference Board of Missions upon the 
recommendation of their Conference Committee on 
Evangelism. Members of an Annual Conference 
may not be given appointments which are nominal 
in order that they may do the work of evangelists 
independent of the Committee on Evangelism and 
the Board of Missions, and they may not be given 
the appointment of Conference evangelist when it is 
known to be virtually nominal. General evangelists, 
approved evangelists, and Conference evangelists 
shall make reports of their work, the results of their 
labors, and their financial receipts to their respective 
committees as often as they may be required. 
Pastors who require the assistance of evangelists 
shall, as far as practicable, use the evangelists 
indorsed by the General or Conference Committees 
on Evangelism.” (Discipline, Paragraph 490, Ar¬ 
ticle XIX.) 

There is in some minds a prejudice against voca¬ 
tional evangelists. The wholesale condemnation of 
them is no more in order than the wholesale con¬ 
demnation of pastors, presiding elders, or bishops. 
They have legal standing in the Church; and if one 
of them is guilty of anything unethical or unmethod- 
istic, let complaint be made to the committee which 
recommended him. If he is a general evangelist, 
this complaint should be sent to Dr. P. L. Bussell, 
Nashville, Tenn.; if against a Conference evangelist, 
to the chairman of the Conference Committee on 
Evangelism. The offending brother's case will be 
regularly and legally investigated. If guilty of a seri¬ 
ous offense, he will be deposed from that office. It 
usually happens, however, that the offending brother 


100 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

is not an authorized evangelist. The law requires 
every one doing vocational evangelistic work to get 
the recommendation of a committee and be under 
rule. No man can appoint himself an evangelist. 
A bishop cannot appoint a man an evangelist until 
he is recommended by a committee; but as a matter 
of fact we have local preachers who are engaged in 
vocational evangelistic work who have not been 
recommended by a committee and have not been 
appointed by a bishop. We need a law to penalize 
any man who thus appoints himself an evangelist. 
He is a free lance. He is not under the rule. He does 
many reprehensible things that bring vocational 
evangelism into disrepute. We need a law to silence 
and penalize him. If every man doing vocational 
evangelistic work (and the law now says that he 
must have the recommendation of a committee) 
were under the supervision of a committee and 
appointment of a bishop, nearly all the complaints 
against evangelists would disappear. 

Our pastors are urged in the Discipline to employ 
as far as is practicable evangelists who are thus 
authorized. We have good and great and gifted men 
who are duly appointed, who are just as loyal to the 
Church as pastors or presiding elders, who love the 
Church, and who are winning multiplied thousands to 
Christ. Employ these men. They are mighty cham¬ 
pions for the great doctrines of the Church and 
promoters of its great movements. We need both 
pastoral and vocational evangelism in our Church. 
Our law provides for both. Let us use both to the 
best possible advantage. 


CHAPTER X 

ST. PAUL, THE GENERAL EVANGELIST 

St. Paul still maintains the primacy among 
evangelists. Modern times have produced some 
evangelists of marvelous power—Moody, Sam Jones, 
Billy Sunday, and Gipsy Smith will shine as stars 
of great magnitude as long as time lasts and humanity 
appreciates the work of mighty men of God. But 
the one star of first magnitude that transcends and 
outshines all others in the galaxy of great evangelists 
is St. Paul. I know not what the future may pro¬ 
duce in the way of evangelists, but this I know: that 
up to this date St. Paul is preeminent among all the 
great luminaries that shine in the evangelistic 
heavens. St. Paul could not be ordinary in any 
sphere. As a statesman he doubtless would have 
gained eminence; as a philospher he would have been 
among the greatest; as a theologian, missionary, and 
evangelist he has no equal in the annals of history. 

Paul had a very definite and a most glorious 
conversion. Judging from the record, he never had 
a doubt about the deity of Christ and his own 
personal experience of his saving power after the 
Damascus experience. A hazy experience is not 
likely to produce abounding zeal. Doubts never 
made a man a mighty apostle. Paul had an experi¬ 
ence. He had experimental religion. He knew whom 
he had believed and had no doubts about that one 
being able and willing to keep that which he had 
committed to Him against that day. I am not 

( 101 ) 


102 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

pleading for an experience that can locate time and 
place of its inception, for I think children ought to 
be taught that they are in the kingdom and that a 
personal trust in Christ, followed by obedience to 
his will, will keep them in the kingdom. But I am 
pleading for such definite conscious dealings with the 
Lord all along throughout our ministry that we shall 
speak boldly and authoritatively of God's personal 
dealings with us. Whatever it may cost, the evan¬ 
gelist—be he pastoral or vocational evangelist— 
must have a definite personal experience of Jesus' 
saving power. Without this, without the witness of 
the Spirit, he dare not attempt to evangelize. When 
Bishop Thoburn said, “I know Jesus Christ is alive 
and doing business to-day, for I have been face to 
face with him myself," he was but expressing what 
Paul knew day by day in all his great evangelistic 
tours. With this basic fact—an experience of Jesus's 
power to save to the uttermost all who come to 
him—Paul had the necessary foundation for making 
an efficient evangelist. Let all who have not such a 
glowing and glorious experience either retire from 
evangelistic work or wait before Him till such an 
experience is theirs. 

Paul had a definite call to his work. To Ananias, 
who was sent to take the last human step in the 
conversion of Saul of Tarsus, God said: “Go thy 
way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my 
name before the Gentiles." (Acts ix. 15.) Paul 
said: “Unto me is this grace given, that I should 
preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches 
of Christ" (Eph. iii. 8); “Depart: for I will send thee 
far hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts xxii. 21). These 


103 


St. Paul , the General Evangelist 

scriptures—and others equally pertinent might be 
cited—teach beyond doubt that Paul realized un¬ 
mistakably that he had a definite and specific call 
to do the work he did. Such a definite call heartens a 
man in the midst of the discouraging things he meets 
in the ministry. A consciousness that he is led of the 
Lord emboldens a man who without this conscious¬ 
ness might give up the work. Every man doing the 
work of an evangelist ought to be able to say, 
“ Pm just where God wants me to be, and to the best 
of my ability doing exactly the work God wants me 
to do, and doing it as best I know just as he wants 
me to do his work.” No difficulties daunted Paul; 
neither persecutions nor prisons, perils by land or 
sea, had the least effect on him. He was under 
orders. He was doing business for the King. Blessed 
is he who knows that he is called and carries with him 
a sense of God's presence. 

PauVs Humility .—Paul was brave, courageous, 
and heroic, but not egotistical. “For I am the least 
of the apostles, and am not meet to be called an 
apostle." (1 Cor. xv. 9.) “Unto me, who am less 
than the least of the saints, is this grace given." 
(Eph. iii. 8.) How any one can be less than the least 
I do not know, but of this I am sure: there was no 
cocksure, self-confident air about St. Paul; although 
made the leader of the Church, though caught up 
into the third heaven, where he saw and felt unspeak¬ 
able things, yet he was never vain or puffed up. 
God's great servants have great faith in him, but 
are not inflated nor egotistic, nor do they assume a 
condescending attitude toward their fellow men. 


104 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

That rare virtue, sweet humility, is peculiarly at¬ 
tractive when seen in a great soul like Paul. 

The Gist of His Preaching .—All Paul's preaching 
was Christocentric. Christ was in all, over all, and 
above all. The excerpts we have of his sermons and 
his Epistles all fairly bristle with the thought of 
Christ. He was possessed, if not obsessed, with the 
thought that the world's only hope is in Christ. 
“Christ Preeminent" would be a good key word to 
Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians—indeed, to any 
and all the Pauline Epistles. To the Church at 
Corinth he states that when he came among them he 
determined to know nothing among them but Jesus 
Christ and him crucified. The philosophy of the 
Greeks, the polished oratory of the orators, the 
rhetoric of the rhetoricians he could have used, but 
he counted them as dross. His consuming passion 
was to present Christ. Paul never dealt in superficial 
matters, never used enticing words of man's wisdom. 
He presented the majestic, magnetic Christ as the 
sole and sufficient cure for all the world's ills. He is 
the panacea for all our woes. He supplies all our 
needs. “We are complete in him." “My God shall 
supply all your needs according to his riches in glory 
by Christ Jesus." Paul was absolutely sure that he 
had the cure for all the sins and sorrows of the world. 
Why should he turn aside to ephemeral issues? Why 
should any evangelist? Nonessentials are an abomi¬ 
nation in a revival meeting. The poet later expressed 
the ruling passion of this great man's life: 

“’Tis all my business here below^ 

To cry, ‘Behold the Lamb!”- 


105 


St. Paul , the General Evangelist 

Judging by what one may see in homiletic reviews 
and in excerpts from sermons in newspapers, I fear 
that Christ does not have the preeminence in pulpits 
to-day that he had in Paul's pulpits. 

Paul the evangelist lived the crucified life. “I 
am crucified with Christ.” (Gal. ii. 20.) Paul was 
as impervious to the ordinary allurements of the 
world as a dead man. The mercenary motive, the 
desire for honor and preeminence, the lust of the eye, 
and the pride of life had no more effect upon that 
great evangelist than they have upon a corpse. He 
who has been to Gethsemane and Golgotha with our 
Lord comes to an audience with a strange power 
unknown to men who have not been crucified with 
Christ. This was no vapid profession or extravagant 
boast with St. Paul. His whole life corroborated 
this declaration. 0 for crucified men for pastoral 
and vocational evangelistic work! 

This general evangelist was led of the Spirit. He 
led the Spirit-filled and the Spirit-guided life. “Now 
when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the 
region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy 
Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were 
come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: 
but the Spirit suffered them not. And they passing 
by Mysia came down to Troas. And a vision ap¬ 
peared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of 
Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over 
into Macedonia, and help us. And after he had seen 
the vision, immediately we endeavored to go into 
Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had 
called us for to preach the gospel unto them.” 
(Acts xvi. 6-10.) This passage reveals the policy 


106 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

of St. Paul in his entire evangelistic career. He 
obeyed the Holy Spirit. He dared not go where the 
Holy Spirit forbade his going. He dared not refuse 
to go where the Holy Spirit called. His spiritual 
ears were so sensitive, so acute, so responsive to the 
leadings of the Spirit that he seemed nearly always 
to know the mind of the Spirit. Why not? ‘'In 
all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct 
thy paths.” "The steps of a good man are ordered 
by the Lord.” "Commit thy way unto the Lord; 
trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.” 
In all those perilous voyages, in dangers by land and 
sea, in prison cells and at the bar in the courts, Paul 
knew that he was led of the Lord. Blessed is the man 
who is led of the Lord in the whole program of his life! 

Paul was an evangelist of incomparable tact. 
When he came to Athens, that city of culture, re¬ 
finement, and intellectual conceit, he saw the altar 
erected to the unknown God. With the tact and 
skill of a master workman, he began by telling them 
that he knew about that unknown God. A less 
tactful evangelist might have begun by denouncing 
their idolatry. The fact that they had erected an 
altar to a god whom they did not know gave Paul 
an opening, a point of contact. With an adroitness 
incomparable, he moves from this up to presenting 
Jesus. Although Spirit-filled and Spirit-led, although 
a crucified man, wholly given to the propagation of 
the gospel, he still needed to use common sense in 
dealing with humanity. When a man thinks that 
his piety and his prayers, his visions and his illumina¬ 
tions, can be offered as a substitute for common 
sense in dealing with humanity as it is, he needs to 


SL Paul, the General Evangelist 


107 


study the work of this consummate tactician in 
evangelistic work. Paul does not hesitate to avow 
his conscious effort at adaptability. “What is my 
reward then? Verily, that when I preach the 
gospel, I may make the gospel of Christ without 
charge, that I abuse not my power in the gospel. 
For though I be free from all men, yet have I made 
myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. 
And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might 
gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as 
under the law, that I might gain them that are under 
the law; to them that are without law, as without 
law (being not without law to God, but under the 
law to Christ), that I might gain them that are 
without law; to the weak became I as weak, that I 
might gain the weak: I am made all things to all 
men, that I might by all means save some. ,, (1 
Cor. ix. 18-22.) Was there ever his equal in adap¬ 
tability? His versatility seemed unlimited. His 
willingness to become all things to all men that by 
all means he might be able to save some ought to 
be a rebuke to any evangelist so set in his ways that 
he is not flexible to meet the diversified cases with 
which he must deal. Sanctified common sense and 
religious tact are as indispensable to a great evangelist 
as are some more conspicuous gifts that are oftener 
thought of. If we had a record of Paul's personal 
dealings with the multitudinous cases he dealt with 
personally, doubtless it would make “Twice-Born 
Men" look ordinary. We have enough to see how 
exceedingly tactful he was in dealing with human 
beings with all their frailties and prejudices. We 


108 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

shall always think of Paul the evangelist as Paul 
the master tactician. 

Paul’s Zeal .—Paul was an enthusiast. He was 
never apathetic or half-hearted about anything. 
He was whole-hearted or nothing. He had such a 
vision of the sinfulness of sin and the glory of salva¬ 
tion that he could not be cold, mechanical, or pro¬ 
fessional in his evangelistic work. Doubtless he 
was often called a crank or a fanatic, but his only 
defense or explanation was, “Whether we be beside 
ourselves, it is to God; or whether we be sober, it is 
for your cause. For the love of Christ constraineth 
us.” (2 Cor. v. 13.) The love of Christ impelled, 
propelled, and compelled him to do unusual things. 
His boundless zeal attracted attention and provoked 
adverse criticism. His unquenchable enthusiasm 
and his invincible ardor made him irresistible. Did 
any other evangelist ever have such indomitable zeal? 
His zeal could not be dampened by ridicule nor 
abated by persecution. Among friends or foes, by 
land or sea, at home or abroad, he pressed unre¬ 
lentingly on to save all men. Pastors who are too 
economical with their energies or evangelists who 
are afraid they will break down from overwork might 
take lessons from this man of God. 

These are some of the things that account for 
Paul's greatness as an evangelist. The reader is 
advised to reread the latter half of Acts and all the 
Pauline Epistles, and then, without reference to this 
chapter, make out a list of things which he thinks 
account for Paul's greatness as an evangelist. 


CHAPTER XI 

EVANGELISM IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 

The Sunday school is our largest evangelistic 
opportunity and, hence, our gravest responsibility. 
Efficiency here is most effective, and inefficiency 
most deplorable. It is extremely important that the 
pastor have a right conception of the objective of the 
Sunday school. To lead every pupil who has reached 
the years of discretion to accept Christ as his or her 
personal Saviour and to train every Christian to 
active and efficient service is the objective of the 
Sunday school of to-day. With this clearly defined 
objective, one can easily determine the degree of 
efficiency his school has reached. If every person 
in the school has professed faith in Christ and united 
with the Church, he may call the school fifty per cent 
efficient. That is to say, let committing the students 
to Christ and bringing them into the Church count 
half. If every Church member is being trained to 
do some actual service for God, humanity, and the 
Church, he may count that fifty per cent. All who 
are old enough for membership in the Church and 
every Church member being trained for Christian 
service make a school one hundred per cent efficient. 

Beware of placing the emphasis elsewhere. It 
is easy to have an obsession for numbers. It is well 
to have a holy ambition for the school to reach the 
largest number possible. If to do good to one 
hundred is well, to do good to two hundred is better. 
But to lose sight of the higher objective in our scram- 


110 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

ble for numbers is unworthy of those engaged in this 
high and holy business of conducting a Christian 
school. There are many questionable methods of 
running up the attendance—a mere spasmodic 
spurt, by competition, by offer of prizes, by emulation 
of various and sundry kinds—but usually these do 
not leave a sufficient residuum to justify the efforts. 
All ephemeral and evanescent convulsions have a 
tendency to obscure the real objective. The pastor 
must keep always as his polar star the objective 
mentioned above. 

Sometimes there is a craze for record-keeping and 
system. That records ought to be carefully kept, no 
one denies. Surely all God's work ought to be done 
decently and in order. A chaotic, slovenly school is 
a reproach to the leader and doubtless offensive to 
Almighty God. But if fussy secretaries and conten¬ 
tious superintendents make the record-keeping and 
the system offensive, the very end for which the 
school exists is defeated. The school does not exist 
to keep records and have a perfect system, but we 
keep records and have system in order that the ob¬ 
jective of the school may be realized. The records 
are kept for the school, not the school for the records. 
Keep primary things as primary and secondary 
things as secondary. 

Good order, prompt attendance, the best and most 
up-to-date methods in pedagogy—all that is known 
about making the school—should be utilized. Every 
superintendent, departmental superintendent, and 
every teacher ought to attend every training school 
that it is possible to attend. They should likewise 
read every available worth-while book that would 


Evangelism in the Sunday School 111 

increase their efficiency in this work. It is hardly 
possible to overemphasize this. But let no teacher 
or superintendent get so infatuated with some 
feature of management or some phase in pedagogy 
that he will get this all out of proportion with other 
important matters. Immature teachers and super¬ 
intendents are liable to do this. In so doing they 
will likely lose sight of the main objective of the 
school. Let every one connected with the great 
Sunday school program, from the General Secretary 
and the Sunday School Editor, Conference super¬ 
intendents, presiding elders, pastors, local super¬ 
intendents, and teachers, get the ultimate aim of the 
Sunday school as clear in their minds as the noonday 
sun. “Every pupil enrolled in the school (who has 
reached the time of discretion) a member of the 
Church and every Church member in training for 
service/' All the machinery, from the offices in 
Nashville down to the smallest piece of machinery 
in the remotest rural district, should be organized 
for this end. Then there will be but little lost motion. 
A clearly defined objective is necessary to efficient 
service anywhere, especially in Church work. Let 
this objective be rooted and grounded in all who have 
to do with Sunday school work. 

How can a pastor create this conception in his 
Church? First, it must be regnant in his own heart; 
not simply an acquiescence to this notion, but a 
passionate conviction that this is the chief end of 
the Sunday school. Unconscious influence will 
emanate from him if he cherishes this abiding con¬ 
viction. When he is wholly unaware of it, he will 
be influencing his Sunday school workers on this line. 


112 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

Then he should make a conscious effort to bring all 
the workers to his viewpoint. The general super¬ 
intendent will naturally come first. By casual 
association, by definite conferences, by placing proper 
books in his hands, by getting him in touch with the 
leadership of the Church at large that See it this way, 
by all legitimate means let him persist until he has 
brought the general superintendent to his viewpoint 
of the Sunday school work. The next would be the 
departmental superintendents. If the pastor and 
the general superintendent have definite views that 
coincide, it will not be so difficult to bring all the 
departmental superintendents to the same views. 
The pastor and he will confer as to the sanest and 
most effective methods to bring all the departmental 
superintendents to the right conception of the 
school's work. Then comes the task of bringing all 
the teachers to the same viewpoint. If all the 
teachers and officers can be brought together in the 
council monthly, there will be a good chance to 
infuse these notions into the leadership of the school. 
Incidentally it can be asserted or assumed from time 
to time. Before Decision Day it ought to be given 
very thorough consideration. At this time the pastor 
and general superintendent can usually tell whether 
they have the genuine cooperation of all the teachers. 
I do not hesitate to say that a teacher who cannot 
be brought to this viewpoint ought, after all efforts 
have failed to bring him into sympathy with this 
conception, to be relieved from the duty of a teacher. 
He may be learned, he may know pedagogy, he may 
have the knack of teaching, but why retain one who 
will not contribute in his work to the main purpose 


113 


Evangelism in the Sunday School 

of the school? He may be imparting valuable knowl¬ 
edge of the Bible. But what use have we with Bible 
knowledge that does not produce righteous living? 
Holding the truth in unrighteousness received some 
severe rebukes by the great St. Paul. A pastor and 
general superintendent should have a. staff that 
is in harmony with their purpose in running the 
school. Let them never give up until they realize 
this ideal. It is possible. It is highly desirable. It 
is indispensable to the highest efficiency. 

The organized Bible classes are our best oppor¬ 
tunity for adult evangelism. The members of the 
organized classes are already socially and intellectu¬ 
ally assimilated. Naturally they are by all odds the 
easiest to reach for Christ. The last revival campaign 
I held in my own Church resulted in a large number 
of additions to the Church. There was a goodly 
number of adults on profession of faith. Subse¬ 
quent to the meeting, while studying the advantages 
of the organized Sunday school class for evangelistic 
work, I investigated and found that every one of 
the adults received on profession of faith was a 
member of some organized Bible class. This is very 
significant. In the first place, the classes get the 
susceptible ones. Men who can resist the invitations 
of the fellows getting members for the Bible class 
can also resist the invitations to attend the revival 
meeting. Men who are too engrossed with their own 
affairs to attend the Bible class are liable also to be 
too much engrossed to attend the revival meeting. 
It is more and more becoming true that our best 
opportunity for adult evangelism is with the organ¬ 
ized Bible class. The vocational evangelist with his 
8 


114 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

ability to attract the man of the streets will often 
get the people who do not attend the Sunday school, 
but the regular pastor, using the usual pastor's 
methods, will not get much beyond the Sunday 
school constituency in the meetings he conducts 
himself. Hence the importance of getting the whole 
community into the Sunday school. Every legiti¬ 
mate effort should be made to enlist and keep en¬ 
listed in the Sunday school every adult in the 
community. 

The non-professing Christians in the class afford 
a fine opportunity to train the Christian members 
to work. There is already a friendship, a fellow¬ 
ship existing between them and the unsaved mem¬ 
bers. The discreet pastor can assign certain non- 
Church members to certain Christians in the class 
as his or her special responsibility. If the teacher 
of the class is a soul-winner, he has the finest possible 
chance for personal work. Let there be a private 
understanding between the pastor and the teacher 
that each member of the class be brought to Christ 
during the revival if possible. This work can and 
ought to go on more or less all the year through, but 
observation leads me to say that the best time for 
reaching the unsaved members of the adult classes 
is in the revival meeting. You have the atmosphere, 
the continued services, and many other factors that 
make it easier then than between revival campaigns. 
It is better than the Decision Day for obvious rea¬ 
sons. Your Decision Day is planned largely for 
children. While all must be converted and become 
as little children, they are not usually anxious 
to appear as little children before they are con- 


Evangelism in the Sunday School 115 

verted. It is rare that grown people come to the 
altar to confess Christ in the same class with the 
little ones. I once saw it otherwise. After all the 
children had made profession convicting power fell 
upon the adults and they flocked to the altar. Ordi¬ 
narily, however, you will reach the adult members 
in the annual revival better than on Decision Days. 
Let the class, the Church, the pastor, and all con¬ 
centrate on getting all the adult members of the 
Sunday school into the Church during the revival 
campaign. 

An Exasperating Experience .—Many pastors have 
the distressing experience of seeing a large number 
of men who have attended the Bible classes going 
away before the preaching hour. What shall he 
do? Some pastors have made the mistake of pub¬ 
licly complaining and even denouncing the men 
for going away. This is a blunder. He who does it 
will not likely get them converted in his revival 
meeting. He will thereby create a chasm that will 
be hard to span. Rather than complain and de¬ 
nounce, let the pastor ask himself why the men 
attend the Bible class and do not attend church. 
Can he not offer something as attractive, as helpful 
as the class? Whatever he does, he must not im¬ 
press them that he is not in sympathy with them. 
Better get men to the Bible classes than to nothing. 
Let them come and get into fellowship with the 
other men, • who finally may bring them into the 
Church. Attend their banquets, enjoy their suc¬ 
cesses, boost the class from the pulpit, help to recruit 
members for it, be big enough and broad enough to 
rejoice at the success of the class, even if it seems 


116 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

to reflect upon your ability to hold them to the 
preaching service. Jealousy is little and contempti¬ 
ble. Keep in the most sympathetic touch with these 
classes and finally win the men for Christ. 

When the pastors enlist the more than one hun¬ 
dred and fifty thousand Sunday school teachers 
in soul-winning, we shall have a vast army of our 
best men and women engaged in this great work. 
Every pastor knows that thousands of these teach¬ 
ers do not yet feel their personal responsibility for 
the salvation of the children in their classes. The 
General Office in Nashville has been diligent for many 
years trying to instill this thought in the minds of 
the thousands of teachers. They regret and all the 
pastors regret that some are not yet enlisted. 
Sunday school teachers are, or ought to be, our very 
best people. If they cannot be enlisted in soul¬ 
winning, who can? They, too, have the best op¬ 
portunity. If proper relationships have been es¬ 
tablished between the teacher and pupils, no one 
else has so good a chance to help them spiritually as 
has the teacher. Let no teacher feel that peda¬ 
gogical efficiency is a substitute for personal work 
with the pupil with reference to leading him or her 
to accept Christ as a personal Saviour. Pedagogical 
efficiency ought to be a factor in reaching this very 
end. Let no teacher feel that a large attendance 
and well-prepared lessons are a guarantee that he or 
she is doing the best possible work with the class. 
Good attendance and well-prepared lessons ought to 
ultimate in making useful Christians out of all the 
class. If not, to what good is all this effort anyway? 

Let not the Sunday school people be deceived. 


Evangelism in the Sunday School 117 

It has been commonly reported that more than 
eighty per cent of those coming into the Church are 
from the Sunday school. This is no guarantee that 
the Sunday school is efficient in winning pupils to 
Christ. A vast majority of people who join the 
Church are in the susceptible age. When revival 
meetings are held where there are no Sunday schools 
and no Sunday school workers, eighty per cent or 
more of the converts will be children of Sunday 
school age. From ten to twenty is the time for reach¬ 
ing humanity for any cause. Many times good 
revivals are held where there is a Sunday school 
and nearly all the pupils are brought into the Church 
where the influence of the Sunday school teacher 
was negligible. In other words, the big job of the 
Sunday school leaders and the pastors is to enlist 
and train these teachers to be soul-winners. All 
too frequently the pastor or the evangelist does the 
work of bringing the children to a decision. 

What per cent of your school are in the Church? 
What per cent are being trained for service? Name 
the numerous kinds of work people may be taught 
to do in the Sunday school. 


CHAPTER XII 
DECISION DAY 

Decision Day has proved to be so helpful in win¬ 
ning children that no pastor can now afford to leave 
it off his calendar. The writer well remembers his 
first crude effort at holding a “Decision Day” in his 
school. Looking at it retrospectively, I cannot 
conceive how one could have done it more awkwardly 
than I did. But year after year I kept on trying it. 
I had no model in the beginning. The First Church 
in Memphis was the only one, so far as I knew, that 
had the priority over my feeble effort. I gathered 
information for the Sunday school experts and 
watched others as they began the same kind of work. 
By persistence I learned how it is done. In all my 
recent pastoral charges I have succeeded in getting 
all the children committed to Christ and into the 
Church except where parents got in the way. During 
my last three pastorates every child old enough to 
join the Church has been reached except where there 
was parental interference. There is no other phase 
of a pastor’s work more important than this and none 
other where he needs more skill and tact. 

As To the Time .—After many years of experience 
in this matter I am convinced that there should be 
two Decision Days in each school annually. Easter 
is and ought to be one; the other one should be in 
October. It is the reaping time for the year. The 
harvest should be gleaned twice per year. Many 
( 118 ) 


Decision Day 


119 


children do not remain through the year. Some are 
there in the spring who are not there in the autumn, 
and vice versa . While children should be taught 
to make this committal at ally time, yet there is 
more likelihood that it will be made during the 
preparation for Decision Day than at any other time. 
Hence, in order to do thorough work and let no one 
slip by, I have found it best to have two days, one 
in the Easter time and the other in October. 

Preparation for the Day— The time having been 
set months in advance, ample time is allowed for 
getting ready. The pastor and general superintend¬ 
ent should have careful conference about the prepa¬ 
ration. Then it should be laid before the “Workers’ 
Council/’ if there is one. If not, call a meeting of all 
the teachers and officers and take time to impress 
them with the supreme importance of this day. 
Whether in the regular Council meeting or a special 
meeting called for the consideration of Decision Day, 
let the pastor and superintendent come to this 
meeting profoundly concerned about adequate prepa¬ 
ration for this great day. Simply announcing it and 
exhorting teachers and pupils to be ready for it is 
but little better than nothing. Each teacher should 
make a survey of his or her class and at the second 
meeting bring these names, the names of those who 
are not members of the Church, to the meeting. 
In the first conference they are advised to make the 
survey to find how many are not Church members. 
The teacher should first make the effort himself or 
herself to reach the pupil. Much prayer and great 
tact will be needed. By all means have private 
interviews with the pupils. The parents should be 


120 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

taken into the confidence of the teacher and their 
cooperation secured. If the children are willing, but 
the parents antipathetic or apathetic, the teacher 
should confer with the departmental superintendent, 
or the general superintendent, or the pastor. She 
will use her discretion as to which of these to call in 
first. She should never give up until all of them have 
tried their skill to bring the recalcitrant parents 
into line. The amazing stupidity and colossal 
ignorance of some parents will depress the inexperi¬ 
enced workers. I have known a number of cases 
where all of us failed and the children were not 
reached. In all cases where sufficient time has 
elapsed it has been ruinous. One girl grew up and 
went astray. Dying in disgrace, she reproached her 
parents for having kept her out of the Church when 
she was so anxious to be a member. The last words 
they heard from her were her bitter wails that she 
was lost and that they were to blame for it. In 
another case a boy of twelve was kept out of the 
Church by his parents on the ground that he had 
quarreled with his sister and hence was not fit 
to join the Church. (No one knows how many 
quarrels the parents had, and yet they were mem¬ 
bers.) He afterwards broke their hearts and sent 
them down to premature graves. Jesus uses the 
most terrinc and alarming language about those 
who offend one of these little ones. If all the parents 
who have offended their little ones had had a mill¬ 
stone hung around their necks and then cast into 
the depths of the sea, the bottom of the sea would be 
a rich depository of millstones. 

The pastor and general superintendent should have 


121 


Decision Day 

a conference with each departmental superintendent 
some weeks before Decision Day to see how they are 
progressing in winning the children for that day. 
If possible, get all the children committed before 
Decision Day. Make it public profession day. 
Some of the departments will need help. Let the 
pastor and superintendent afford the needed help. 
Some departments will have the matter well in hand 
and they only need commendation. Others will have 
to have much help. Some departmental superintend¬ 
ents and some teachers will not know how. Others 
will not care. Whatever the difficulty, the pastor 
and general superintendent must overcome it. If 
those who should do it do not do it, the pastor 
and general superintendent should take that de¬ 
partment in hand. Never allow Decision Day to 
arrive without every pupil in the school having been 
dealt with personally and privately as much as is 
needed to reach him or her. This will require great 
persistence and diligence on the part of the pastor 
and general superintendent, but what is more im¬ 
portant than this? Leave off everything else, if 
need be, until after Decision Day. Do this well. 
Look after every detail. Neglect no child. Exhaust 
yourself with all the unwise and indifferent parents. 
Inspire every teacher and every superintendent to 
to do his or her best to have every one ready to make 
the public profession on Decision Day. 

Decision Day .—The great day having arrived, it 
behooves all to be at their best. However careful 
and painstaking the preparation has been, much 
yet remains to be done. The program on Sunday 
morning will depend on the buildings.• Supposing 


122 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

you have a building with separate departmental 
openings, you will hold as many services as you have 
departments in' which' there are persons, to be 
reached. The pastor should preach as many ser¬ 
mons as there are separate departments that morn¬ 
ing. Let him begin with the Junior Department. 
He may bring on this day the most advanced class 
from the * Primary Department into t the Junior 
service. After a song that they can sing and a 
prayer that they can understand, the pastor in the 
simplest language possible without any emotional 
appeal tells them what they need to do. “ Trust and 
Obey” might be the subject. After explaining what 
it is to trust and obey Jesus, he asks for all who want 
henceforth to trust and obey Jesus to come forward. 
Again he prays, commending these little lives to 
God. Then he has the departmental superintendent 
to take the names of all who think they want to 
join the Church and tells them when the class for 
instruction in Church membership will meet. This 
service should not exceed fifteen minutes in length. 
Thence to the Intermediate and Senior Departments. 
Here he preaches a brief sermon, perhaps telling 
the young people how to get forgiveness of sins. 
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to 
forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all un¬ 
righteousness,” would not be a bad text. The ser¬ 
mon should be a plain didactic effort to teach them 
how to be saved—certainly no emotional appeal. 
Then he asks all who are not Christians who want 
their sins forgiven to come to the front. Again he 
prays for the forgiveness of their sins. Here it may 
be well to ask all who have confessed their sins and 


Decision Day 


123 


asked God to forgive and feel that he has forgiven 
them to take your hand. Then the superintendent 
of that department takes the names of all who think 
they want to join the Church. Of course no trained 
pastor will receive them into the Church that day. 
He will tell them when the training class for that 
department will meet for instruction preparatory 
to joining the Church. This service should not con¬ 
sume more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Then 
to the Young People's Department. A brief dis¬ 
cussion of some Bible hero or heroine and an appeal 
to enlist ought to be made. If proper preparation 
has been made, those in this department who are 
not already Christians can be reached in this service. 
All who make a profession of faith in this service 
may be received into the Church that very day at 
the morning hour. 

Beginning Monday at a suitable hour, the pastor 
should meet the Primary-Junior group for instruction 
for Church membership. At the earliest noment 
possible he ought to see all the parents of all the 
children who have enrolled as candidates for Church 
membership.' Get their cooperation, if possible. 
The sooner you get to them after the Sunday morn¬ 
ing service, the better. Many of them may be seen 
Sunday afternoon if you have kept that afternoon 
clear for that purpose, and that you ought to do. 
If you meet the Primary-Junior group at three in 
the afternoon, you could meet the Intermediate- 
Senior at four. Meeting them every day is pref¬ 
erable.* If this can be done, you can have them 
ready for Church membership the following Sunday. 

Let us go back now to the one-room or two-room 


124 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

house that does not permit the several services 
consecutively. In that kind of building, let the 
Beginners and the smaller Primary students be sent 
out of the room. They should not be in the room 
when the sermon is preached. Arrange in advance 
some plan to provide for them elsewhere. This is 
important. Arrange the older Primaries on the front 
seats, Juniors on the next, Intermediates next, and 
Seniors next. Sing a simple easy song that all can 
sing. Preach a plain sermon on, say, “Five Reasons 
Why All Children and Young People Should Be 
Religious.” At the close of this sermon have all 
who are already Christians and members of the 
Church to stand. Then ask those who desire to be 
Christians to stand. Then ask all who stood on the 
second proposition to come down to the front. In 
the fewest and simplest words possible tell them how 
to be saved. Have them kneel and pray for their 
immediate salvation. While still on your knees 
ask all who have accepted Christ as their Saviour 
to take your hand. If all the younger element in the 
Sunday school make a profession, you might then 
make an appeal to the grown people. Sometimes 
the sight of the little ones committing their lives 
to Christ touches some unsaved father or mother. 
Utilize whatever psychological advantage may arise 
out of this service to reach grown people. Then 
the children should be placed in classes for instruction 
according to their ages. Parents should be con¬ 
sulted just as is suggested above. 

Receiving the Children into the Church .—This 
should be a great occasion. Set the time. Advertise 
extensively. Have the parents of the children pres- 


Decision Day 


125 


ent. At the proper time call all the children to be 
received into the Church to the chancel. Ask the 
fathers and mothers of the children to stand in a row 
just behind the children, preferably parents just 
behind their own children. Supply each child with 
a hymn book. In the training during the preceding 
week you have gone over these vows and the an¬ 
swers, so that when you read a vow they know at 
once to reply with the answer. The most unpardon¬ 
able thing I have ever seen a preacher do in receiving 
members is to read the vows and then say, “The 
answer is so and so.” Let it be hoped that no 
such thing will ever happen again in a Methodist 
Church while the world stands. Our ritual is beauti¬ 
ful and impressive when properly used. The initia¬ 
tory rites in clubs and fraternities, if slovenly gone 
through with as some preachers receive members, 
would not be the least impressive, nor would the 
candidate think he was joining anything worth 
while. Take time to impress the children that they 
are joining the best institution in the world. Teach 
them that, though they may live to join many clubs 
and fraternities, they will never join any other in¬ 
stitution that stands for so much as the Church does. 
Bring the fathers and mothers into the service as 
our ritual provides. Make it a great day for the 
parents. Send the children away feeling that they 
are members of the best organization in the world. 

It would be going beyond the province of this 
chapter to discuss the development of these children 
after they join the Church. I cannot refrain from 
saying that to tell them, now that they are members 
of the Church, that they must be good, say their 


126 Modern Evangelism on Fundamental Lines 

prayers, and so forth is about as wise as to say to a 
newborn babe: “You are now in the world. Take 
your nourishment and grow up to be a strong man 
or woman.” They will need protection, nourish¬ 
ment, training. The skillful pastor will spare no 
effort to get them to doing something that will 
identify them with the work of the Church and 
develop them in service. The large Church with its 
Junior Church can solve this. The major part of our 
Churches cannot have a Junior Church simultaneous 
with the Senior Church. In that case the pastor 
can preach monthly at the morning hour to the 
children. Indoctrinate them. Encourage them. 
Feed them on food convenient for them. It is a 
joyous service. It is pleasing to the Master. 

Decision Day properly prepared for, wisely car¬ 
ried out, and faithfully followed up is of inestimable 
value to the Church. 




































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